Home of the Brave
by foobar137
Summary: Dark AU; sequel to Nothing Civil About War and Glorious And Free. The war is beginning, and everyone must work together to keep the Council from taking Canada in addition to America. Isabella and Colin have a mission in America, while an unexpected source of help arrives, Adyson joins the fight, and Ferb and Phineas keep an eye on things. The Council won't just give up, though...
1. Opening Salvos

**Dark AU where a subversive organization caused a Second American Civil War, then pushed through laws sentencing POWs from the other sides to chattel slavery. The war has now ended, but a new war against Canada is brewing to try to keep the truth from coming out. Isabella ended up on the opposite side from Phineas and Ferb; while they were busy researching new weapons, she was turned into a biomechanically-augmented supersoldier, then captured and sold to Phineas just before the war ended. The three of them escaped to Canada, where she was freed, and have been working to help Canada defend against the expected attack.**

 **This completes the trilogy begun back in Nothing Civil About War. There is one more side-story planned in this setting, which I've begun working on - the story of Buford and Ginger and how they got together.**

 **Many, many thanks to Sabrina06 for beta, and to twistedingenue and shinykari for help with Chicago. Any mistakes in the depiction of Chicago are my fault, or due to changes in the city after having been a national capital for 16 years.**

 **Trigger warnings: war, politics, slavery, loss of autonomy, death, threats of rape, more death, violence, death by gunshot, death by bombing, death by bludgeoning, death by cruise missile, death by burning/melting. Lots of people die in war. Some of them do so on-screen here. Some are killed in cold blood by our protagonists.**

* * *

The cruise missile skimmed the waters of Lake Ontario, telemetry data streaming behind it through the ether. Colonel Gilbert watched its status on the big screen; the rest of the people in NOREASCRUCOM watched it as well while doing their other duties. As the first cruise missile that would reach its target in the Northeast Cruise Missile Command's area, it was the bellwether of their success. As the first missile targeted at metro Toronto, the largest city in Canada, its impact would be even more important.

They hadn't been expecting this. Everyone knew that the war of words between Ottawa and the American government in Chicago was tense. Accusations of kidnapping and nefarious Canadian plots had been all over the news. Official reports were that it was all the Canadians' fault, but Colonel Gilbert had seen what passed for objective news after the government censors got their hands on it.

Regardless, nobody had expected it to escalate to open warfare so quickly. Allegedly, Canadian forces had attacked Fort Harrison in Montana and abducted American citizens. Colonel Gilbert suspected that the recent rumors that the entire Second American Civil War had been a plot by a conspiracy called the Council of Sanford may have been related, and that this was a way to make sure that wartime media controls could stay in place.

That wasn't his problem. He'd received an order from General Michaels to launch cruise missiles with tumbler warheads at Canadian military targets. The targets, as expected, were military bases and research centers in highly-populated areas. The hope was that a sudden strike would demoralize the Canadian populace and lead to, as the saying went, a short, victorious war.

Half his tumbler warheads had gone out, and he'd been told not to expect replacements. The technology to replace them had been lost when the Fletcher-Flynn Research computers had encrypted themselves shortly after Fletcher and Flynn had defected.

"Two minutes, Colonel," the sergeant monitoring the lead missile said. He nodded to her as he watched the screen.

One corner of the screen showed the grainy video coming from the missile's nose camera. The top half projected the locations of all the missiles on the Canadian-American border onto a map. The remainder gave the lead missile's telemetry data - airspeed, ground speed, GPS location, and estimated time to arrival.

A light sparkle appeared on the video feed as the missile flashed toward DRDC Toronto, a defense research center in the city. The sparkle filled the camera's view, and then the feed cut out entirely. The telemetry data froze briefly, then was replaced by the words, 'NO SIGNAL'.

"What happened?" Colonel Gilbert said, leaning forward. "What was that sparkle?"

"Checking, sir," the sergeant said, pulling up data on her computer.

"How long until the next impact?" the colonel said.

"One minute, Montreal," a corporal to one side said.

"On the main screen," the colonel said.

"Interesting," the sergeant said. "Sir, if this is correct, the tumbler core activated for some reason."

"So, the missile will reappear?"

"No, sir. It didn't activate properly. It just shifted the missile into another dimension with no return trigger."

On the main screen, a missile flew above the forests of southern Quebec. Ahead, buildings started to appear, and the St. Lawrence River curved around them. The slight sparkle appeared again, rapidly filling the screen. Colonel Gilbert held his breath as the video feed vanished and the telemetry data froze.

"Same thing?"

The corporal tapped at the keyboard, then turned to the colonel. "Yes, sir."

"Well, fuck," the colonel said. "I need to tell Chicago."

* * *

"How are we doing?" Phineas Flynn asked, leaning over his step-brother Ferb's shoulder. Ferb was keeping an eye on the tumbler shields he had created, which had been deployed around as many cities and defensive sites as they could manage. They were gathered around a monitoring console in the lab that Ferb had been using, along with a few other people who were cleared to know about the tumbler shields.

"One shield failed for unknown reasons," Ferb said quietly. "Four other missiles hit unshielded sites."

Phineas winced. "Any word on casualties?"

"Too many."

"Still, we stopped..."

"Eighty-eight of ninety-three."

"I'll take it," Lieutenant Colonel Scott, the base commander, said. "That's an awful lot of soldiers still alive because of you."

"It just means they'll use conventional warheads next time," Ferb said darkly.

"Right, but tumbler warheads are more frightening to civilians. Being able to stop them is a huge morale boost," Vanessa Doofenshmirtz said from her seat next to Ferb. Vanessa was the head of Doofenshmirtz Biosciences, the defense contractor they'd been working with on Project Obelisk. She had also started dating Ferb several months earlier.

"Any response from Ottawa?" Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, asked from where she stood, next to Phineas. She'd just returned from her rescue mission into America a few hours before, bringing Ferb and Doctor Tjinder back, along with Holly, her friend, and Erik, a former member of the Council of Sanford. Erik had betrayed the hidden conspiracy group that had started the civil war within America, and had tried to help the Southwest faction fend off the other three, which had all instituted slavery for captured soldiers of the other factions.

Phineas had just found out that Erik had also been the man who had killed Isabella's mother in a terrorist bombing that had been one of the triggers of the civil war, and had then been instrumental in creating Project Dewdrop, the biomechanical enhancement project that had turned Isabella into a supersoldier. Isabella wasn't overly fond of him, and Phineas knew she had plans to have a long talk with him after the current crisis passed. If Erik was lucky, he'd come out of it in one piece.

"Nothing so far," Vanessa said. "I'm sure they're letting the Mexican and allied European governments know that the mutual defense treaty is being activated."

"Hopefully none of them buy the American lies," Warrant Officer Colin Park said. Colin had been their primary military liaison on Project Obelisk, an attempt to recreate and enhance Project Dewdrop. Eventually, he had been the first volunteer for the biomechanical implants, and was now ready for a mission. He had been scrubbed from the rescue mission with Isabella at the last minute in an attempt to keep the Americans from attacking Canada; ultimately, it hadn't been enough, and President Sherman had ordered tumbler missiles launched as he requested a declaration of war from the American Congress.

"Hopefully," Phineas agreed. "There's always hope, right?"

* * *

Colonel Alexander Archer sat at his desk, staring blankly at the wall. How had it all gone wrong? Just a few months ago, he'd been in charge of Special Research Projects for the American Army, having previously led it for the victorious Central faction in what was now being called the Second American Civil War. He'd been wrapping up the last few loose ends from the war, in particular the Southwest faction's supersoldier research project, Project Dewdrop. His superiors in the Council of Sanford had wanted those biomechanical implants to make themselves superhuman, and to create controllable supersoldiers. Dewdrop implants had a remotely-triggerable neural connection in them, which could be used to cause great pain or even kill them at a distance. The plan was to make implants without kill switches for Council members, and with kill switches for the soldiers.

Unfortunately, the bunker holding the Project Dewdrop researchers had been hit by a tumbler bomb two weeks before the end of the war, killing all but one of the Dewdrop-enhanced soldiers. Even worse, all the records of Dewdrop had been completely deleted from the Southwest computer systems by the time his team got access. Archer had picked his top researchers, Ferb Fletcher and Phineas Flynn of Fletcher-Flynn Industries, to track down the last known Dewdrop soldier, the man who'd killed their father, codenamed Echo Three. They could use his implants to reverse-engineer the details and create new ones, as part of Project Sledgehammer, the project attempting to reproduce the Dewdrop implants for the reunited American government.

And then everything had blown up in his face. As it turned out, Echo Three was a woman, and that asshole Flynn had bought her as a slave the day before the war ended. She'd hidden there until Fletcher had figured out who she was, and then she and Flynn had tried to flee to Canada. Despite her and Flynn's best efforts, Archer's men would have caught the fugitive couple...if Fletcher hadn't turned traitor. The three of them had escaped into Canadian custody, and Archer's first attempt to retrieve them had caused an international incident and gotten him busted down from head of Special Research Projects. SRP had been his domain, and suddenly it was given to that idiot General Riggins. Archer was left in charge of just one project - Project Sledgehammer. They'd sent him here, to Fort Harrison in Montana, and put him in charge of Sanford West, the secret facility for Council business. The researchers they'd given him had been mostly failures, but they'd had one clever idea - in case they captured Echo Three, they'd made a special collar that would activate the pain switch in her Dewdrop implants. That bastard Flynn had disconnected the antenna, but the implant that controlled the pain switch was also the one that kept the remaining implants from turning to jelly and killing her, so a powerful-enough broadcast from close enough should be able to activate it.

Archer had set intelligence assets to watch Fletcher, Flynn, Echo Three, and a Canadian researcher that they worked with named Tjinder. He'd hoped to kidnap some or all of them and bring them here to replace the Council's researchers.

And then, not even two weeks ago, his life had hit another shipwreck. On Shatter Day, the annual holiday commemorating the terrorist attacks that had destroyed Washington and begun the civil war, he'd gotten drunk with Dutch Abercrombie, Mayor of Danville, in the mayoral office. They'd talked about, among other things, how they had carried out the bombing in Danville on that day, nineteen years earlier. And Dutch's assistant, a woman named Holly, had recorded the whole thing and sent it off to anti-slavery activists.

Holly had been sent to Sanford West as a slave research subject, joining Erik Bailey, a former Council member who had led the Southwest faction and betrayed the Council. And just as they caught Holly, things finally went right for Archer. Fletcher and Tjinder had fallen into his traps, and were brought to Sanford West to recreate the Dewdrop implants. And, even better, he'd expected that Echo Three would come to rescue them, and had trapped her as well. With two of the top researchers in the world, and the last Dewdrop soldier, surely he could make them recreate the implants.

And then Dutch had arrived. The Council wanted him hidden so that nobody could ask him about the recording. He'd had his eye on Echo Three ever since he'd first seen her, and now he had his chance. He got set up in the Black Hole, the room in Sanford West that was shielded against all electromagnetic waves, and had her brought in, handcuffed and helpless.

And that was when they learned that Flynn had upgraded her implants, and the special collar did absolutely fuck-all to stop her. She'd beaten the shit out of Dutch, breaking his knee in the process, and then proceeded to take over the base computers, knock out Lieutenant Knox in the monitoring station, and escape with all four of the other prisoners. Fighter intercepts had tried to stop them, but they'd made it across the border and ejected from the stealth hovercar she'd arrived in just before a missile destroyed it.

Between the very public incident, and the increasing unrest brewing because of the leaked recording of his conversation with Dutch, Archer was pretty much persona non grata with the government in Chicago these days. The President had been forced to declare war to try to force the leaked recording back underground. And Archer had been told to await further instructions.

He could only hope they'd let him live at this point. He suspected Dutch would not be so lucky. That'd be a shame, because he and Dutch had been friends all the way back to their days in ROTC in college. But if it came down to it, if it was him or Dutch...sorry, Dutch.

His secure phone, sitting on the desk for just this call, buzzed. Taking a deep breath, he flipped it open and answered it with his Council codename. "Acid Test," he said.

"Scenic Harvest," the voice on the other end said. Scenic Harvest was a Senator from Michigan, and (more importantly) his Council superior. "You are ordered to report to Chicago immediately for reassignment. Talk to General Sumner of the Joint Chiefs."

"Thank you, sir," Archer said. "May I request information on the assignment?"

"No," Scenic Harvest said curtly. "Your boy fucked up pretty bad, Acid Test."

"Yes, he did, sir," Archer said. "Should I have him come to Chicago as well after he gets out of surgery?" The medical staff said that Dutch might walk again someday, but it was going to take some time.

"No. He's to stay at Sanford West until we send for him. We're still deciding what level of sanction is appropriate."

"Understood, sir. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Do that. Scenic Harvest out." The line went dead.

Archer looked at it for a long moment before setting it on the desk again. _So. I'm still alive. They wouldn't bring me to Chicago just to kill me._

 _I hope._

* * *

Adyson heard the familiar voice as she entered the police station.

"My daughter has been missing for a week now," Mrs. Washington was saying, "and you are telling me that you cannot open a missing persons report on her?"

"What's wrong?" Adyson asked, stepping up to her, limping only slightly on her prosthetic leg. The original had been lost to an IED when she had been driving trucks for the Central military during the civil war.

"Adyson, how nice to see you," Mrs. Washington said, a smile crossing her face as she turned. She'd dressed up, clearly, in an orange dress that shone against her dark skin, with matching hat, shoes, and purse. "Have you seen Holly recently?"

"Not since last week. That was why I came - to file a missing persons report."

The desk sergeant looked up at her and sighed. "I'll tell you the same thing I told her," he said, nodding toward Mrs. Washington. "The file for Holly Washington is marked as closed and I am not permitted to reopen it."

"Who marked it closed?" Mrs. Washington asked.

"I'm not aware. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you, ma'am." The sergeant looked very uncomfortable.

"Who can?" Adyson asked.

"Nobody in Danville," the sergeant said. "Maybe somebody in Chicago."

Mrs. Washington stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. "I see. Adyson, let's go." She turned and stalked out, Adyson following as quickly as she could.

Once they were outside, Adyson said quietly, "I think I know what happened."

"Oh, I'm quite aware what happened," Mrs. Washington said. "She was clearly the person who leaked the recording of Mayor Abercrombie, so this...Council...probably vanished her. I'm just trying to make them," she nodded her head back toward the police station, "understand what the government they defend is doing."

"Bastards," Adyson muttered, then looked up, embarrassed. "Sorry."

Mrs. Washington gave her a wry smile. "No apology needed. Come with me, I have some people I want you to meet."

* * *

Erik Bailey watched the Canadians rush about, tracking the war situation. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared, at least partly because the Fletcher boy had created shields to stop the tumbler bombs.

He'd seen this drill too many times to be excited about it again. _Eighteen years of civil war does that to you, especially when you're one of the people who instigated it._

"You. Bailey," Isabella said, bursting into the room. He looked up at her and sighed.

"Are you here to finally kill me?" he asked. He deserved it. Whatever she did to him, he deserved it at least twice over. He'd killed her family, almost killed her. He'd left her an orphan as the country shattered. Then one of his last-ditch projects had taken her from the orphanage and turned her into a weapon. A weapon with a built-in self-destruct.

She'd come out of it in better shape than anyone could have expected, and even found love, it seemed. The inventor boy, Flynn, had replaced the self-destructing implants with newer ones, better ones.

"No. They want you upstairs. They want you to send a broadcast to the Americans." She gave him a thin smile.

"Then you'll kill me?" he asked hopefully as he stood up.

Her smile broadened, becoming more vicious. "No. You don't get off that easily, you son of a bitch."

He sighed again, nodding. He deserved that, too.

* * *

Irving duBois sat in the main computer center for the Anti-Slavery Front, watching the monitors. The wartime footing made it tricky to get into the government's computer systems, and he needed to be careful not to get caught.

A message pinged to one side of his main monitor, and he brought it up.

 **Stalker -**

 **Canadian TV is showing this and feeding it worldwide. Claims to be Senator Bailey from Southwest, talking about how he was part of the Council and set off the Santa Fe bomb. No way in hell Chicago will let it go public. Can you fix that?**

He pulled up the attached video, of a pale, middle-aged man with thinning brown hair, sitting in a comfortable chair and facing the camera. He recognized the Senator, who had been one of the leading anti-slavery advocates in the Southwest government for the past ten years. He'd vanished when the Southwest had surrendered, and it had been whispered that the Central government in Chicago had had him killed.

"I am Senator Erik Bailey, formerly of the Southwestern Senate," the video began. "This confession is long, long overdue, and I can only apologize for that. The delay is due to my own cowardice."

He straightened out his shirt and cleared his throat. "I was a member of the Council of Sanford. We were - they are - a group of individuals who thought that America was going down the wrong path into the new millennium. Nineteen years ago, in 2005, we used a domestic terrorist group called Nathan Hale's Liberators as a patsy as we set off bombs across the country, including two thermonuclear devices that leveled Washington, DC. I personally set off the bomb in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I do not know the names of all of the bombers, but I know that the bombs in Danville, in the Tri-State Area, were set by Alexander Archer and Jason Abercrombie, now a general in the American military and the mayor of Danville. My understanding is that the bomb in Cleveland, Ohio was set by Philip Sherman, now President of America. The thermonuclear devices were set by two martyrs to the cause, still celebrated by the Council, named Grant Hodgkins and Nicole Marr. There are more names, which will be in the data dump at this address."

A website name appeared at the bottom of the video, as Senator Bailey took a sip of water from a glass on the end table next to his chair. Irving pulled up the site as he continued to watch the video. The site was sluggish, but had a link to a WideData stream of the data file. _Peer-to-peer for the win,_ Irving thought as he started the download. WideData was an enhanced version of the old BitTorrent protocol, which provided nearly-untraceable peer-to-peer distribution of data.

Senator Bailey cleared his throat again. "As I said, I was a member of the Council. Once we had shattered the government, we took control of the four factions, not letting them join together because we had not yet achieved our actual goal of enslaving American citizens." He chuckled ruefully. "It seems so simple to say that. And yet our goal was truly that - take those people we felt were unworthy and turn them into property of their alleged betters. It took six years before the Central faction was able to get the first slavery law through. Two of the other three factions followed quickly, and I was pushing the final faction, my home of Southwest, to make it unanimous."

He gave the camera an embarrassed smile. "And then I had a moment of revelation. I was in Chicago, allegedly negotiating a peace treaty that we knew would never happen, and I saw someone I knew. He had been a member of my protective detail. He was a good man, a good father, a good husband. And there he was, collared and treated like an animal."

His smile had turned to a bitter frown. "I realized then that my whole outlook was built on a lie - that anyone wearing a collar was not less than human. That this whole idea of enslaving my fellow man was one of the most monstrous ideas I'd ever had."

Irving took a sip of his soda and kept watching, enthralled, as he started typing the commands to share this video around to ASF sites nationwide.

Senator Bailey sat up and continued. "When I returned to Southwest, I withdrew my support for the SLAVE Act, as I had cleverly titled it. More - I got in contact with some soldiers who opposed slavery, and arranged for accidents for the other Council members in the Senate. The SLAVE Act died in committee, and good riddance."

He took another sip of water and cleared his throat. "I began to work toward keeping Southwest free. It worked for a time, until the Council decided to end the war. They caused the three remaining factions they controlled to merge together, with President Sherman's Central faction victorious. Then they turned on Southwest together. We might have still won, even with that." He sighed deeply. "We might have still won," he said quietly, looking into the distance for a moment.

"But two brilliant scientists from the Central faction invented the tumbler bomb, and in its first test, it destroyed the Southwest military's high command. It took time for the Southwest military to get its bearings back, and that was time we did not have. The Southwest surrendered eighteen months later.

"I've been told that I was allegedly killed in the fighting around Portland. The fact that I'm alive should tell you how true that statement was. They'll tell you that I'm lying, that I was forced to say everything I've said today. Trust that statement as much as you trust the stories of my death. In actuality, I was kidnapped by them and taken to a military base in Montana as an experimental subject. I am here and free because an American soldier went to retrieve a Canadian scientist and an exiled American researcher who had been kidnapped from Toronto. The American government - in the persons of General Archer and Mayor Abercrombie - wanted these scientists to perform experimentation on unwilling human subjects like myself, with the goal of creating so-called 'supersoldier' biomechanical implants. The plan was that the Council could, indeed, be better than those they consider cattle."

Irving shook his head. _This is dynamite. How can we get this on national TV?_ He started pondering the network's security systems.

"They have made up stories about the need to attack Canada for one reason and one reason only - the Council is scared right now. Their lies are starting to fall apart due to the courageous efforts of Holly Washington, who leaked a recording of Archer and Abercrombie admitting to the Council's existence and the Danville bombing. Holly was also in Montana with me as an experimental subject. She's safe with me in Canada now."

Behind him, a tall black woman walked in and stood behind the chair. "It's true. I made the recording. I gave it to the ASF. Somehow, the Council found out about it and caught me. I was sentenced to slavery without a trial, because the Council considers themselves above mere laws. Were it not for the efforts of this valiant soldier, I would still be there, being raped and abused by the Council's thugs for their sport."

Senator Bailey cleared his throat. "We can't give the name or details of the soldier for her safety. I am sorry for that. I hope that, someday, she can get the acclaim she deserves for her efforts in the name of freedom.

"Freedom. It's a word that the American government likes to throw around. How they need to protect freedom by censoring your speech. By forbidding free assembly. By enslaving people for the crime of being drafted by another faction's army. It's all a lie. They only want freedom for themselves. The freedom to do whatever they want to everybody else with no repercussions.

"Every one of your Supreme Court justices is in on it now, and most of the members of Congress. The President has been in since the beginning.

"So now, they have problems. They need a new source of slaves. The downside of ending the civil war was that they couldn't enslave American soldiers. Look for them to add slavery as a punishment for more crimes. Expect the upcoming Supreme Court case to rule that Central POWs were lawfully sentenced by the Dixie and Columbia factions, and that they must all be collared again. Their goal is a world with three levels - on top, them. Protecting them, a layer of slave overseers and soldiers. And everybody else in chains. And the second level only stays there as long as they're useful.

"More importantly, they're realizing that that second level has more in common with the third than with them. They're going to war against Canada - a country that has never provoked them - for two reasons. First, expect a law shortly that says that Canadian POWs can be enslaved. It's a violation of the Geneva Convention, but they don't care. They're already international pariahs.

"Second, they can say that investigation of what they've done can't possibly happen now. There's a war on, after all." His voice dropped to a sarcastic tone. "Don't you support the war? What sort of traitor are you? Traitors get collars."

He paused and drank a bit more water. "America has always liked to call itself the Land of the Free. It is my hope that it can be that again one day. But for that to happen, it will first have to be the Home of the Brave. Stand up against them. If you're a soldier, don't defend these people. They created the war. Your comrades who were killed or enslaved - their blood is on the hands of the Council. They'll put a collar on you as soon as they can.

"I can't do much from here. I will accept punishment for my crimes, but not from those for whom I committed them. Not from those who have committed far, far worse.

"My fellow Americans, I call upon you. Take back your - our - country from those who have stolen it. The time is now."

The video ended, and Irving sat back with a smile for a moment. Then he shook his head and pulled up his research on breaking into the national television feeds


	2. Skirmishes

General Archer approached the American Army command center in a bunker beneath downtown Chicago, coming to a stop in front of the guards at the door. He recognized both as junior members of the Council. They stared at him, unsmiling.

"Well?" he asked.

One of the guards looked off to one side. A clerk at a nearby desk - nephew of a state governor, and deep in the Council - sighed deeply, then nodded. The guard stepped to one side and held the door open for Archer.

Inside, the command center was more chaotic than he'd ever seen it, even at the height of the civil war. Traces crossed the border, ending abruptly just outside major Canadian cities. Markers indicated known American troop strengths, and estimated the status of their Canadian opponents. Most of the American forces were scattered around the country, especially in the former Southwest territories, trying to keep the recently-sparked protests from blowing up into something bigger.

Everyone in here was part of the Council. You couldn't make it this far in the military without being a member.

General Michaels looked up at him from the chart. "Ah, Archer. Good to see you. I was told to send you in to see General Sumner. He's in his office." Michaels and Sumner were both high-ranking Council members.

Archer walked toward General Sumner's office, off to one side of the command center. He was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and had been instrumental in stealing the thermonuclear weapons used to vaporize most of the pre-Council government, along with most of Washington, DC.

General Sumner's secretary looked up at him expectantly. "Major General Alexander Archer to see General Sumner."

The secretary nodded. "He's expecting you. Go right in."

General Sumner's office was dimly-lit by the screens covering all four walls. On the screens were all the images shown in the command center outside, with the full disposition of American and Canadian forces. Sumner, a tall black man with a fringe of white hair around his bald head, glared at Archer from behind his desk. The four stars on each shoulder stood out in the glow of the screens. Archer noticed that there was no seat on this side of the desk, and stood facing his superior officer.

"You're fucking lucky we still need you," Sumner growled. "I'd lock a fucking collar around your neck if I could, except I wouldn't want to waste the collar. You and your boy fucked up bad, Archer."

"I know, Sir," Archer said quietly.

"Status report. What the fuck happened?"

"My trap worked, Sir. We caught Fletcher and Tjinder in Toronto, and brought them to Sanford West. The Canadians wouldn't send their own forces, so Echo Three had to come in solo. The booby trap we had set up for her caught her."

"So why don't you still have her?"

"We failed to test the enhanced collar that we were sure would disable her," Archer said. "We should have done so in a situation where we could more easily regain control of her."

"Why didn't it work?"

"She said that Flynn replaced her implants with ones that were not susceptible to the Dewdrop Liquidator and Agonizer protocols."

"Shit. Okay. That it?"

"No, Sir. Even with that, the situation may have been salvageable if Jumping Jack hadn't decided to take her into the Black Hole for his use. Or if he'd realized that we'd stored her gear in there, to keep it from broadcasting, and moved it out." Jumping Jack was the codename used for Dutch - Mayor Abercrombie.

General Sumner winced. "How's he doing?"

"The doctor says his knee was pretty much destroyed - a full-force kick from a Dewdrop-enhanced soldier to the side of the knee. He was scheduled for surgery while I was flying back here. I'm not sure how the surgery went, but he may never walk without a cane again."

"Okay. So we took a soldier skilled in electronic warfare, and gave her back her gear. And then?"

"She used the keypad inside the Black Hole as her entry point to the building's computer systems. This enabled her to take over the building and sneak up on Lieutenant Knox. I want it on Knox's record that this was not her fault in the slightest. The only reason we knew they were gone before they were out of the country entirely was her actions."

"Which were?" General Sumner asked, steepling his fingers.

"She spotted signs that indicated that Echo Three may have broken out, and flushed the systems in an attempt to regain control. That caused base security to contact her. I went to investigate and spotted the escapees leaving."

General Sumner nodded. "I see. I have the Air Force report on the attempted intercepts of the hovercar. Some new stealth system?"

"That's my understanding, Sir, but I don't know details. We intended to research that as well, but she broke out too quickly."

"I'm amazed you caught her in the first place, to be honest." General Sumner sat back, frowning. "How much of the national situation are you aware of?"

"Not much, Sir. I got shipped to Sanford West. I've been left out of the loop."

"It's a fucking mess out there, Archer. That recording of you and Dutch has been stirring up riots. The President started a war to shut it down, and it's not helping. And now that asshole Bailey has sent a new video around, spilling everything he knows."

Archer grimaced. "I'd like it on the record..."

"I'm aware of your opinions. You said up front that we should just put a bullet in his head and bury him in a shallow grave."

"As long as he was alive, this was a risk."

"As it turns out, you were right."

"Cold comfort, Sir."

General Sumner chuckled. "I'm sure it is. We're clamping down on the video as much as we can, but the WideData streams are damn near impossible to stamp out."

"How bad is the video?"

"He's openly calling for revolution and accusing the Council of wanting to enslave everyone."

Archer sighed. "I wish he were wrong, Sir."

"I know. The fucking idiot Royals with their asinine need to prove their superiority. Not that I mind having a few slaves around, of course. Did I show you the blonde I bought just after the war ended? Well worth having the war in the first place, if you ask me." General Sumner sat back and folded his hands. "But that's beside the point."

"What would you like me to work on next, Sir?" Archer said.

"You worked most closely with Fletcher and Flynn. So far, we know they've created a more advanced stealth system and a shield against tumbler bombs."

"Wait, what? First I've heard of a shield. I know Fletcher had ideas for one, but..."

"We assume that's what it was. Only five percent of our tumbler missiles got through to their targets in the initial salvo against Canada. Some sort of energy field caused them to prematurely tumble." General Sumner typed a few commands into his keyboard, and one of the screens showed video from the missile aimed at DRDC Toronto. As Archer watched, the screen filled with a golden glow before the signal was lost.

"Can we launch with conventional warheads? See if this is just a defense against tumblers?"

"We could, but we've lost the element of surprise. Their air-defense systems are ready for us now, and we'd lose a lot of missiles getting there. And, unfortunately, we don't have enough to spare. Cruise missiles were low priority for restocking, since we thought we had another year before the attack on Mexico. We're at least a month out on our next shipment."

"Damn." Archer watched the screen for a moment as it looped through the missile hitting the gold sparkles. "Ground attacks?"

"We're trying to get troops reassigned so we can make one. The protests are tying up too many of our people, and we've been releasing draftees because the war's over. And when the Supreme Court decision comes down on Monday, we're going to lose a chunk of people to slavery. We don't have the manpower for an attack for at least another two weeks, probably three." He sighed. "The timing of this really sucks, to be honest. We'd have been much better off if we could have held off the war for another month. But, Phil felt it was necessary to quash the rebels."

"Any chance we can delay the Supreme Court decision?"

"No, it's pushed as late as it can be already. And we certainly don't want to set the precedent that slaves can be freed en masse like that."

Archer nodded. "So what do you want me to do?"

"You're my assistant now. You keep an eye on the situation and figure out what Fletcher and Flynn will come up with next. Give us some idea how to counteract it."

"Thank you, Sir!" Archer said enthusiastically. "I won't let you down again."

"You had damn well better not. You've got two strikes and have fouled off about five more pitches. Now, about your boy Abercrombie..."

"I can't defend what he did, Sir. The Royals do that sort of thing."

"I know. That's the problem. That's the main purpose for the Black Holes. Somewhere that a slave can be abused freely without monitoring. I can't nail him for this fuckup without the Royals deciding they need to nail a Patriot for something, probably you. And I can't afford to lose you right now. So, he probably skates. We're sending him to Sanford Central as soon as he's cleared by medical."

"Thank you, Sir."

"Don't thank me yet. You or your boy fuck up one more time and I'll drop you in fucking Lake Michigan myself. Wearing cement shoes."

"Understood, Sir."

* * *

Vanessa rolled her eyes as Preston, her personal assistant, freaked out at her over the phone.

"I'm as safe as I reasonably can be," she said.

"You're a valuable national asset and need to be somewhere protected," Preston said frantically.

"I'm on a military base. Surrounded by Canadian soldiers. Where exactly would you prefer I be?"

"But..."

"Preston, I have to go," she lied. "Get people to safe areas as needed, okay? Take care." She pressed the button on her phone to hang up, then sagged with relief.

Ferb, lying next to her, propped himself up on one elbow and smiled. "Your people worry about you."

"They do." She set the phone on the nightstand and pulled the blankets up as Ferb's warm arms wrapped around her, pulling her close. Their legs tangled together under the sheets as their bodies, naked after their first round of reunion sex, pressed against each other. He was getting hard again, and she could certainly go for round two soon. It wasn't just that he was back after a week - had it only been a week? It had felt like an eternity after he was abducted by the American government and spirited back across the border. The war was starting, and she needed reassurance from him as well.

Her phone rang again, and Vanessa shouted, "Dammit, Preston!" Ferb chuckled as she picked it up. "Preston, I told you..." she said.

"Ms. Doofenshmirtz?" a voice that was not Preston's said. She recognized it immediately as belonging to Jean Blanchard, the Director of Advanced Research for Defence Research and Development Canada. He was her primary interface to the government, and grants from DRDC made up a significant percentage of the annual budget for Doofenshmirtz Biosciences.

"Oh, sorry, Director Blanchard, I thought you were someone else," she said, sitting up. Ferb's hand, which had been caressing her bare back, suddenly stopped.

"Understood. Sorry to bother you so late. I'm getting inquiries - where are we with the Project Obelisk expansion?"

She took a deep breath. Project Obelisk was the project to replicate and enhance Isabella's implants, and a critical element of both Canada's defence plans and the future of Doofenshmirtz Biosciences. "The first squad of Platoon 11 has received their second round of implants," she reported. "We're trying to accelerate, but there's a lack of cleared warm bodies who can help them get through these first weeks. They need assistance at just keeping themselves cleaned and fed for a couple days after each round."

"How long until they're ready for action?"

"At least a month, unfortunately. Even if we could do all of the implants at once, it still takes time for them to learn how to use them effectively. Warrant Officer Park is just ready for service now, and we finished his implants a month ago."

"Damn," the director said. "So how many Obelisk-ready troops do we have available now?"

"Just two. Or one, depending. Warrant Officer Park, and Ms. Garcia-Shapiro, but she's not technically part of the Canadian Forces."

"That's being dealt with. So, two." He sighed deeply. "I suppose it will have to do. Thank you, Ms. Doofenshmirtz." The line went dead.

She stared at the phone for a long moment before setting it back on the nightstand. Ferb's hand returned to her back, and she cuddled into him. "Just hold me for a bit?" she asked.

She felt him nod, as his arms wrapped around her again. For a moment, she felt safe. Right now, that was enough.

* * *

Isabella stretched as she sat up in bed. Phineas, lying next to her, was still sound asleep. _I suppose I ran him through the wringer last night_ , she thought, and smirked. Their reunion had been rather...athletic, and he wasn't in shape the way she was. _I should see if we can get him lung implants. Then he wouldn't have to come up for air for a couple minutes at a time._

Regardless, she needed to get some running in. She tracked down a sports bra and a pair of running pants, along with a pair of socks. Fortunately, the April weather was starting to warm up, so she didn't need anything more than that.

She got dressed and walked into the living room, tracking down her sneakers. She was just lacing them on when there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" she called, standing up.

"Colin," the familiar voice came through the door. Colin - Warrant Officer Park - had been their liaison with the CSOR platoon that had been their bodyguards since arriving in Canada, and had been her running partner ever since she'd arrived here at CFB Suffield. The two had become fast friends, and two months ago, he'd volunteered to be the first Canadian with biomechanical implants like her own.

She opened the door, expecting to find him in running clothes, but to her surprise he was in uniform, holding a briefcase. "What's up?" she asked, puzzled.

"Can I come in for a moment?" he asked uncomfortably, giving her an awkward smile.

"Of course." She stood aside so he could enter the small mobile home that she and Phineas had called home for the last five months. He took a seat on the sofa, setting the briefcase next to him, and she sat on the chair opposite him, curling her legs up underneath herself.

He took a deep breath and opened the briefcase. "There's a war on. The Canadian Forces have asked me to ask you if...if you're willing to sign up. We thought we'd have enough time to get more enhanced soldiers ready before the war started, but the Americans didn't play along. It looks likely that you and I are the only Obelisk-enhanced soldiers that will be able to serve for the next month. At a bare minimum."

She nodded, slowly, thinking through the problems. "Right. We were going to be training the first squad as their implants came online, but they won't even be fully upgraded for another week or more. I'd assumed they'd send you off on missions while I trained the newbies."

"They want us both out in the field, but they'd really like to have you in the chain of command first." He pulled out a few papers. "They want to bring you in as a Warrant Officer, same as me. Equivalent to Sergeant First Class on the American side. A promotion for you."

She laughed bitterly. "At least it's less painful than my last stripe." The Southwest army had promoted her to Staff Sergeant shortly before the end, after she'd pushed the button to kill her lover Sophie. Sophie's implants had dissolved themselves, destroying her lungs and causing her to suffocate in the open air. That was policy to prevent hostile forces from getting any information on the implants.

"You'll have to work for this one, though. The goal is for the two of us to disrupt American forces so that they can't get enough together to make a solid attack on Canadian soil. We'll probably be trying to work with American resistance forces."

Isabella sat back, thinking. She'd had enough sneaking around hostile territory to last several lifetimes, each much longer than any she'd ever expected to have. Staying here to train the next round of enhanced soldiers would keep her with Phineas, and hopefully safe.

Assuming that the Americans didn't get their troops together enough to make a serious attack. Canada didn't have the forces to hold off a concerted attack from the south, at least until allied forces from Europe arrived.

And that assumed they ever arrived at all. She hadn't heard anything about how negotiations were going, or whether the Europeans were falling for the American lies about Canada striking first.

She'd already made up her mind, she realized. They needed to buy time so that reinforcements could arrive, so that the American resistance had time to cripple the attack from within. Obelisk-enhanced soldiers would be ideal. And there were only the two of them.

She looked back at the bedroom where Phineas lay sleeping, only to see him standing in the doorway. He looked resigned, as if he already knew what her decision would be.

"Your opinion?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's not my call. I gave up owning you as soon as we got to Canada, I'm not about to start again."

She laughed. They'd originally met when he'd bought her as a slave, back as the war ended. He'd made a point of never taking advantage of that, and she'd practically had to force him to bed before he'd been willing to admit that they'd fallen in love. "I didn't ask for you to make the decision. I asked for your opinion."

He dipped his head, acknowledging the point. "I'll miss you. I'll worry about you. But I know how much they need you."

She nodded and turned back to Colin. "Okay. Where do I sign?"

* * *

Ferb scanned the displays in his impromptu command center. His clearance levels meant he had a more-or-less complete view of the situation as far as the Canadian military knew it, which meant he had ended up as an unofficial advisor.

American ground forces weren't really gathering for an attack. Clearly this war was as much a surprise to them as it was to the Canadians.

Their naval forces were relatively minimal now, after an 18-year ground war. Most of the old American Navy on the East Coast had been shredded in fights between Dixie and Columbia. The West Coast fleet had been mostly mothballed so resources could be spent on ground forces.

Their air force had probed a bit, discovering that Canadian air defense was better than they expected. They'd been unable to make serious incursions, especially since Phineas had given the Canadians information on how to detect the various stealth systems the brothers had designed. A few attempts to sneak stealth bombers across the border had been met by surface-to-air missile attacks, and the survivors had fled to safety.

Still, the Central faction had won at least partly by being able to pivot quickly, so Ferb wasn't willing to say they weren't coming yet. Unfortunately, Canadian defense forces were significantly smaller than the American army, even with the beginnings of the drawdown following the end of the civil war.

 _So. How do we slow them down?_

 _If I were in charge of the Americans, how would I go about this?_

He chuckled to himself. _I wouldn't have declared war right now. That was a mistake._

 _So. We know the American leaders can be goaded into mistakes._

 _What else can we make them do?_

A smile crept across his face.

* * *

"She can be trusted, Louise?" the scarred young woman said.

Adyson looked at her levelly, not commenting. Mrs. Washington - Louise - had brought her to an old warehouse on the west side of town. She had led Adyson into a room where a young Hispanic woman, her face scarred and missing one eye, waited.

Mrs. Washington nodded. "Yes. Holly always said she had a good head on her shoulders. And she realized there was something going on, enough to go try to file a missing persons report for Holly."

The scarred young woman grunted a vague assent. "Okay. What can you do for us?"

Adyson shrugged. "I'm not a hundred percent sure what you need. I served in the Army until I lost my leg to an IED. I drove trucks, mostly. Got caught in a few firefights, and didn't die. I deal with paperwork for a car dealership now."

The woman laughed. "Good enough. I'm Catalina." She extended a scarred hand, which Adyson shook. "This whole situation's going to blow soon - the government can't keep a lid on the truth any longer, and they can't last once it comes out. We need people to help us make sure it happens without too many people being killed. Are you in?"

Adyson didn't even hesitate. "Yes."

* * *

Lieutenant Colonel Scott sat at one end of the briefing room table, shaking his head. Colin had just finished briefing him on just what the top-secret research going on at his base had been.

"Super-soldiers, eh? Didn't see that one coming," he said, sitting back.

Colin nodded as Isabella sat back down. She was still getting used to being in uniform again, but it was obvious that she was familiar with it. She'd given a quick demonstration of some of the abilities of the Obelisk implants, including enhanced speed and strength.

Colonel Scott leaned forward again, picking up a folder. "That explains these orders a bit more, then," he said. "You two will be going to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where you're to sabotage the rail station and air base."

"Grand Forks?" Colin asked, puzzled.

Isabella nodded. "They can cut the country in half it they take out Winnipeg. It's likely to be one of their first points of attack."

The colonel slid the folder to Colin. "That's the information we have on the air base. I want you two to look it over and give me a plan, taking your abilities into account."

"Yes, sir," Colin said, picking up the folder.

"Get back to me in two hours with your first ideas," the colonel said. "Dismissed."

Colin followed Isabella out of the briefing room. "How the hell...?" he muttered.

"Oh, this'll be easy," she said. "The rail station in particular. We can take out the tracks going into town and suddenly there's no way to get troops in there. The roads around there weren't high-priority highways to rebuild after the war, I'm sure, so they can't just roll a convoy in."

"How do we take out an air base?" he asked. "Just the two of us."

"Let's go see what Phineas and Ferb have for us," she said. "They probably know what we're doing already, so they may have some cool ideas."

* * *

"Welcome to Q Branch," Phineas said with a smile as Isabella and Colin came into his lab. They both laughed, Colin shaking his head.

"Colonel Scott just gave us the briefing to help you out," Phineas continued. "You need to render a rail hub and air base unable to take in traffic, yes?"

"Any significant amount of traffic, at least. Make it unusable as a collection point for an assault on Winnipeg," Colin said.

Ferb pulled out a long case, setting it on the lab counter. He popped it open, revealing a long sniper-type rifle. "Colin, I understand you're trained as a sniper?"

"Some. Not my specialty, but I can get by. What's that?" he asked, nodding toward the rifle.

"Long-range metal eater," Phineas said. "If you can hit one of the rails with it, it'll burn the length of it for several miles, destroying the rail, the ties, and possibly the railbed."

Colin's eyebrows went up, causing Phineas to laugh. "Why does it need to be a sniper rifle?" Colin asked suspiciously.

"I don't think you want to be near the thing when it starts working," Phineas said. "It's a very exothermic reaction."

Colin frowned. "Science wasn't my strong point."

"It gives off a lot of heat. A whole lot of heat," Phineas said.

"Okay. That'll do for the rails. How about the air base?" Colin said.

Phineas retrieved three small boxes from a cabinet. "Tumbler bombs. Set one about a third of the way from each end of the runway, then skedaddle. The third one is for the municipal airport."

Isabella cocked her head, confused. "I thought tumbler bombs had to move to trigger?"

"It's a different kind. Instead of penetrating armor, it's just using the dimensional tumbling to intensify the explosion."

"How far away from these do I need to be when they go off?" Isabella asked, eyeing the bombs suspiciously.

Phineas thought for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase this. "Off the base entirely would probably be best."

"Gotcha," she said dubiously.

* * *

"So, what do you think their first move's going to be?" General Sumner asked as Archer walked in.

"I'm betting on a strike on Grand Forks," Archer said. "One enhanced soldier. I wouldn't expect more than that. Probably Echo Three, although I can't be sure they don't have more. We know they were able to upgrade her implants, they may have had time to enhance more soldiers."

"Interesting. Why?"

"Everyone's read War Plan Red," Archer said. "It's still a decent guide. Our current plan isn't that far off. Grand Forks is the central point for an attack on Winnipeg. If they can sabotage the infrastructure there, it makes it a lot harder for us to attack. And it's relatively easy to get to from Suffield. There will be attacks in upstate New York and near Seattle as well, but they'll test out their enhanced soldier around Grand Forks."

"Okay. What do you expect, and how do we stop it?"

"Another stealth hovercar, like the one in Montana. First strike on the air force base, then the railroads and the nearby warehouses. The municipal airport as a potential third target, but seems unlikely."

"That makes sense," General Sumner said, sitting back. "Go on."

"Keeping Echo Three off the base is going to be a trick and a half. I've sent off photos of her to the base's security patrol with instructions not to let her bluff her way in. The base's IT infrastructure has been alerted as well."

"Where do you think her key target is?"

"The runways. I'm not sure what she can do to them, but the runways are the only thing that's irreplaceable. Fortunately, it's really, really hard to do permanent damage to a runway. It's just a flat piece of land, after all. They'd need some truly impressive damage to render the runway unrepairable."

* * *

Isabella parked the stealthed hovercar in the wildlife refuge between the air base and the municipal airport, then sat back and took a deep breath. It had been a much more harrowing flight than the last time she'd flown into America. Although less so than the last time she'd flown out, at least.

Air defense radars had lit up the skies along both sides of the border, meaning she'd had to keep the hovercar low to keep from getting spotted. She'd been able to cautiously avoid the AWACS planes patrolling the American side of the border, but it had been a near thing the whole way.

"Let's get this covered up," Colin said, unbuckling from his seat.

"Right," Isabella agreed.

The hovercar was nestled into a small depression, and once they'd covered it up with camouflage netting, it was barely visible in the deepening dusk. They wheeled two small motorcycles out of the back, then gathered up their gear.

"Good luck," Colin said, straddling his cycle. The sniper rifle had been partly disassembled, and lay along the side of his cycle.

"To you as well," Isabella said. She started up her cycle, double-checked her three precious boxes of destruction, and headed off toward the municipal airport.

Security there was incredibly light, and she was able to get one bomb placed near the intersection of the two runways without being noticed. She set it to go off around 3am if she hadn't manually triggered it before then.

It was only a few miles away to the Air Force Base, but getting in there was going to be notably trickier. As an active military base, it would be defended by armed guards all around. She'd had plenty of experience slipping into military bases, but she usually had more time to prepare. Now, she had some idea where she could get into the computer system, but that was about it.

She didn't need to get that far in. The spider bots she'd used for several bombings wouldn't work in this case - the tumbler bombs were too large - but Phineas had said that they would survive being thrown just fine. She just needed to get close enough that she could throw them into the right area.

The road ahead of her was closed by a roadblock. She couldn't easily turn around to avoid the roadblock without it being obvious, so she'd have to bluff her way through. Phineas had given her forged paperwork, along with one of his dynamic identification cards that she could use in an emergency. She hoped it didn't get to that point.

The checkpoint had a small group of soldiers standing by, checking identification. They were carrying standard assault rifles - she was surprised they didn't have the DIMMER knockout pistols Ferb had invented, but apparently they weren't that ubiquitous yet. These were just guards, not anyone high enough up the food chain to have experimental weaponry. Isabella was wishing she could get to her own DIMMER, just in case, but it was hidden underneath the seat of the motorcycle.

She pulled up to the roadblock. "Identification?" one of the guards said in a bored voice. She unzipped her jacket and handed him her fake driver's license.

The guard shined her flashlight on the license, then looked up at Isabella. "Open your visor," the guard said, holding up the card for comparison.

Isabella squinted into the flashlight as the guard looked at her identification, and was having uncomfortable memories of when she was captured by the Centrals at the end of the civil war. They'd surprised her with a bright light that kept her from being able to see the soldiers pointing rifles at her. In the end, she'd been sold to Phineas, and that had probably worked out better than almost any of the other alternatives she'd had. But, all in all, she'd still have preferred not to be sold in the first place.

"Get off the cycle," the guard said curtly.

"Huh?" Isabella asked, confused. She mentally started turning on her implants, getting ready to fight.

The guard stepped back, and Isabella saw that the other four soldiers at the roadblock were pointing their rifles at her. "Get off slowly with your hands in the air," the guard said. "You fucking Canuck traitor."


	3. Impact

Colin sighted in on the tracks just to the side of the main depot. The spring evening was starting to cool off, but the sky was clear. The almost-full moon was high in the sky, giving enough light that he could see without needing to activate the scope's night-vision.

A rumbling sound from the west caught his attention, and he looked over. A train was coming in, a large one. He saw, further along, that there were multiple train cars with tanks on them. A smile crept across his face as he sighted in again, holding his breath as he waited for the tanks to pass over the track section he'd chosen.

"Oscar One from Oscar Two," he said into the radio built into his helmet. "Executing."

He exhaled slightly as he saw a tank out of the corner of his eye, and pulled the trigger. A quiet _*ftang*_ was the only sound the rifle made. A slight flash appeared on the tracks, and then he saw the track start to glow red. The red spot grew rapidly, and the rail began to disintegrate underneath the train. As if in slow motion, he saw the train starting to topple.

He was already starting to disassemble the rifle to put it back on the motorcycle as the crash reverberated through the city. Flames were licking around where the rails had been, and much of the train was now lying on its side, still sliding along as its great momentum pushed it to the east.

An abstract part of his mind wondered how many people he'd just killed. There had been people on the train. There had been people in houses near the tracks, houses that had been flattened by the derailed train, or that would be burnt by the fires that he could see starting even now. He'd been in the military for years, but had never actually killed anyone before.

He couldn't think about that now. He needed to head back to the hovercar and see if Isabella had succeeded. Really, how she'd succeeded - he didn't really have any doubts in her ability to see this through.

* * *

Slowly, keeping her implants active but moving at a speed that would have been slow even without them, Isabella climbed off the motorcycle. Her brain was working through possibilities. _I need to distract them. What can I do to shift their attention elsewhere?_

"Oscar One from Oscar Two, executing," Colin said over the radio, and she had to suppress a smile.

The world was rocked by a devastating crash. It was a couple miles away, but even at this distance it was loud. The soldiers all looked up to see if they could see what was going on behind her.

She was already moving. She grabbed the soldier nearest to her, holding her as a shield, forcing the remaining soldiers to shoot their comrade to get to her. With her free hand, she flipped the seat of the motorcycle up and grabbed the DIMMER hidden underneath. Four shots rang out while the soldiers were still trying to figure out what to do, and they all slumped to the ground. She turned the gun on her human shield and fired again, then tossed the unconscious soldier aside.

 _I don't have any time to waste now. They know I'm here. They're looking for me._

She put her spare magazine into the DIMMER, then put it into her jacket. She got back onto her motorcycle and rode off toward the base, her brain whirling. _How do I get in?_

A sudden thought occurred to her, and she smiled. She activated the radio in her helmet. "Oscar Two from Oscar One," she said. "They know I'm here. Need an assist at Tango Five." The various target points they were going to had been numbered; Five was near the southern end of the Air Force Base's airstrip.

"On my way," Colin said.

* * *

Colin crouched down in the field just off the southern end of the air base. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire sat just across the highway. Through it, he could see an armored personnel carrier parked off to one side of the airstrip, and a HMMWV patrolling along inside the fence.

"So what's your idea?" he whispered.

"How many shots do you have left in that rifle?" she asked.

"Three," he said. "Why?"

"Okay. Here's what I need you to do. First, shoot the fence."

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "It should melt the fence for a ways on either side. Remove the barrier keeping us out."

"Right, second, hit the APC over there. I'm not that worried about the Hummer, but the cannon on there is bad news."

"Will it work as an anti-armor weapon?" he asked, looking at the APC in the distance.

"I think we need to find out," she said. "Third, the trickiest shot. I need you to shoot me a way out."

"Come back this way. I'll give you covering fire against the biggest threat."

"And then we head back to the hovercar and get the hell out of here."

"Not a good idea to hang around, eh?" He grinned.

"Sounds like a plan. Let's do it."

* * *

Isabella crouched over her motorcycle, waiting for Colin's first shot. The two bombs had been moved up so she could grab them while riding. They'd been preset to go off in about half an hour, just in case she couldn't detonate them. Grimly, she thought that as long as she got onto the runway, the odds were high that she'd complete the mission. The hard part was going to be surviving it.

She heard the soft _*ftang*_ of the rifle, and saw the fence starting to melt. The heat burned out sooner, because the fence wasn't as solid or pure as the rails, but it was enough, leaving a hundred-foot-wide gap. She revved the motorcycle and raced across the highway, through the melted gap in the fence. The motorcycle wasn't really meant for this off-road use, but she had to make do with what she had right now, and she needed speed most of all. Across the fence there was a roughly-paved road, and she raced along it.

The armored personnel carrier was starting to turn its turret her way, and she hoped the metal eater would work as well on it as it had on the fence. She didn't hear the shot this time, but she saw part of the APC glow red, and then it began to melt away. She could, just barely, hear the screams of the soldiers inside over the motorcycle's engine, and then the APC's fuel detonated in a loud explosion.

She reached the end of the runway, and brought the motorcycle to full speed. In a few seconds, she was streaking along at over 100mph, and she dropped the first bomb less than 30 seconds after she'd gotten onto the runway. Off to the side, she could see a couple Hummers turning toward her, with gunners prepping the top-mounted machine guns.

She picked up the second bomb and threw it forward, as hard as she could, then skidded the motorcycle to a stop in a bootlegger reverse. She came to a stop for just an instant before opening the throttle again, taking off back down the runway.

She heard machine-gun fire behind her, but couldn't tell how close they were to hitting her. She ducked down as low on the cycle as she could. _Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now,_ she thought.

Ahead, she saw Colin poke his head up and aim the sniper rifle. The machine gun suddenly stopped, and another explosion behind her told her that he'd taken out a Hummer.

She slowed down as she came to the end of the runway, taking the bike back onto the trails leading back to the fence. Off to the side, she could see the melted slag that was all that remained of the APC. _Note to self - point out how useful that thing is as an anti-armor weapon to Phineas._

As she pulled onto the road, Colin's motorcycle drove out of the field, matching her speed. They raced along the highway, and Isabella pulled out the small control box from her jacket pocket. "Here goes," she said, and pushed the button.

It sounded like the world ending, like an explosion mixed with the horrifying sound of reality itself shredding. Off ahead of them, at the airport, she could see a sphere of light appearing, and from the bright lights shining from behind them, she could tell there were two more at the air force base.

It didn't appear that there was any pursuit, and after a couple miles they pulled off onto a side road. Killing the headlights on their cycles, they activated the sonic muffler systems, trading speed for silence.

They crept along for the last mile or so, toward the wildlife refuge where they'd hidden the hovercar. There was some light up ahead, over the hill, but she couldn't be sure what it was.

Colin signaled a stop, and she stopped next to him. With quick hand signals, he suggested that they crest the hill on foot to see what was going on.

They crept up the hill, enhanced hearing checking for anyone approaching, and peeked over the crest.

Three squads of soldiers had surrounded the hovercar, and one soldier was just lighting a blowtorch to cut a hole in the side.

"Shit," Isabella said, staring down at it. "There goes our ride."

As soon as the blowtorch touched it, the hovercar began to melt. The stealth systems within it were far too valuable to risk them being captured, so a self-destruct had been planted inside to go off if it were forced open in any way.

"Now what?" Colin asked.

"That's a damn good question," Isabella said.

"Oscar One, Oscar Two, this is Stalker," an unfamiliar voice said over the radio. "Need a hand?"

"Who the hell are you?" Isabella asked, steel in her voice. The encryption of their radios was supposed to be secure, so somebody being able to patch in was highly disturbing.

"A friend. We need to get you out of there pretty damn quick - they're going to start looking around for you soon."

She looked at Colin, who shrugged. "He's right," Colin mouthed silently.

"Okay. Where do we go?" Isabella asked, heading back down the hill to their motorcycles.

"Head toward Fargo. I'll have some folks waiting to help you off Route 75."

"Understood," Isabella said. She looked at Colin, and mouthed, "Can we trust him?"

Colin shrugged again, then tapped the helmet. Isabella nodded - he had the keys to get into their radios. Either he'd been given them by the Canadians to help them, or he'd hacked them and could presumably turn the two of them in to the Americans at will. There didn't seem to be any disadvantage to going along with his suggestions.

"Let's go," she said quietly, mounting her motorcycle.

* * *

Phineas paced nervously as Ferb monitored the intelligence situation. American forces had located the hovercar about half an hour after the soldiers had departed, so they'd begun backup plans. Canadian intelligence had a connection to someone known only as Stalker, who could provide assistance. They'd given Stalker the encryption keys to the Oscar team radios.

"The hovercar just self-destructed," Ferb said. "We won't have contact with Oscar team until they get in range of a repeater again."

Phineas paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. It didn't help, not enough, but it was all he could do right now.

 _If only I'd invented better stealth for the hovercar. If only I'd enhanced the implants just a bit more. If only..._

 _If only the woman I fell in love with wasn't one of the deadliest fighters on the planet, and needed as the bright tip of the spear._

"They're resourceful," Ferb said. "I'm sure they'll be fine."

"Yeah. I know," Phineas said. "There's two of them this time. How bad can it be?"

Ferb winced. "Not a wise question to ask."

* * *

"We almost had her, Archer," General Sumner said, tossing a folder on his desk. "We had four soldiers pointing rifles at Echo Three. And then..."

Archer nodded. "She's just that good. If only she were on our side. Any chance we could give her a Harmony offer if we catch her?" Harmony was a code name for offers made to particularly skilled and persistent enemies, offering them membership in the Council if they were willing to switch sides...and provide suitable hostages to ensure faithfulness.

"I don't think it'd be a good idea. Shoot to kill. If we do catch her, we'll figure something out then, but if I get my say, we put a bullet in her brain."

"A shame, I suppose," Archer said.

"Why? Equally-attractive slaves are a dime a dozen, Archer."

"That isn't what I mean. She knows more about how to use the biomechanical implants than anyone alive. If - when - we get our own version, she could be a valuable teacher."

"Ah. I was worried that hanging around with Dutch had gone to your head."

"Not yet, no."

"Regardless, it's not worth it. She's caused more damage to our plans than any three other people whose names aren't 'Fletcher', 'Flynn', or 'Bailey'."

"Agreed, sir," Archer said. "So how badly did they hit Grand Forks?"

"Take a look for yourself," Sumner said, spinning the folder around and sliding it to Archer.

Archer picked it up, flipping through it. The first picture was a derailed train that had flipped on its side and destroyed an entire neighborhood. A second showed that the main trainyard was a scorched wreck, and it appeared that the rails themselves were gone. The third showed a gigantic jumbled crater at the intersection of two runways, rendering them both unusable. The fourth showed a single, longer runway with two craters that almost covered the entire two-mile length of it. "Christ," he whispered. "So, Grand Forks is out of the question," he said.

"It's worse than that," Sumner said. "That train took out everything we had warehoused there, which we really couldn't afford to lose. It's going to take weeks to get everything rebuilt now. We're going to have to reprioritize away from Winnipeg."

"That's going to make an attack more difficult," Archer said. "What next?"

"I'm not sure - that's your job. You did well predicting this attack. Not your fault we didn't get her yet. We think she's running away from the border - where does she go next, and how?"

Archer stared at the map for a moment. "Give me a couple hours to do some research, Sir."

* * *

"Holly, can you help me with another video?" Erik asked, poking his head into the lab.

Holly was busy helping Baljeet out, prepping nanoinjections to provide the CSOR squad with another set of biomechanical augmentations. She had been a vital assistant to him, with Ferb helping to coordinate the Canadian military responses and Phineas too stressed about Isabella to be useful.

She nodded in Erik's direction as she injected a soldier in his left arm, then picked up a second syringe and injected his right arm. "That was the last one," she said. She looked at the soldier and said, "Your arms should feel numb in a minute or two, Corporal Oates. Baljeet, can you keep an eye on them while I go help Erik?"

Doctor Tjinder, flipping through charts, looked up and nodded with a smile. He walked over and gave Holly a quick kiss, then said, "Go ahead. I will be here."

Erik led Holly back to the little room they were using as a studio. "So what do they want from us this time?" she asked.

"An update and a bit more detail on what happened in Danville," Erik said.

Holly nodded. "Sounds good. Do we have a script this time, or are we winging it again?"

"Winging it. Here's the notes on what they want in general, but they feel it'll sound more authentic if we're improvising." He handed her a sheaf of papers.

She flipped through them, nodded. "Okay. Let's do this."

* * *

Colin rode his motorcycle along down the side roads toward Fargo. Stalker had told them to turn off of Route 75 after just a few miles, because there were too many soldiers in that direction looking for them.

"Okay, you should be coming up to a rest stop on the right," Stalker said from the radio. "Pull in and hide the motorcycles."

"Roger," Isabella said over the radio. Technically, Colin outranked her, with more time-in-grade as Warrant Officer, but she had far more experience with this type of mission than he did, and he was more than willing to let her take charge.

The rest stop was just a little pull-out off to the side of the road with a couple porta-potties. They pulled the motorcycles into the brush behind it, where they couldn't be easily seen from the road.

"While we have a chance, I'm going to use the facilities," Isabella said, going to one of the porta-potties.

Colin sat back on his heels, waiting. He hoped this wasn't a trap, but just in case it was, he kicked in his hearing implants. His stomach growled, and he muted the sensation of hunger. The implants were great, but they burned through energy like crazy, and their spare food had all been in the hovercar.

He could hear the animals in the scrub behind him - owls and hawks, mice and rats and gophers, all out looking for food. There was no traffic on the road, no vehicles moving close enough to hear. He heard the toilet paper roll in the porta-potty rattle, and gave an embarrassed grimace. _That I didn't need to hear,_ he thought.

Isabella came out with a relieved smile. "Anything?" she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear even with his implants on. He shook his head.

Isabella walked along the back edge of the pull-out, stretching her arms and legs. He watched, amused. He could understand what Phineas saw in her, certainly. Colin wasn't particularly interested in women, but he could recognize that she was an attractive one.

Off in the distance, he heard an engine approaching. Isabella stopped walking and slipped into the brush; he stood, shaking out his legs, and followed. He reached his motorcycle and flipped up the seat, pulling out the DIMMER pistol concealed underneath. Isabella had already retrieved her own.

The engine got louder, and finally, a white box truck pulled into the rest stop. Colin tensed, his hand sweaty on the DIMMER. He'd killed people earlier today - the derailment, and then the soldiers inside the APC and HMMWV he'd hit with the metal eater. The DIMMER felt good in his hand, and he was reassured with the knowledge that whoever he hit with it probably wouldn't die immediately.

The driver got out, a short, Korean woman walking on an obviously-artificial left leg. "Psst!" the woman said. "Stalker sent me."

Isabella led the way out of the brush, and the woman turned toward them. "I'm..." Isabella began.

"You're Oscar One, and he's Oscar Two, and everyone's better off that way. You can call me Juliet," the woman interrupted her.

"Okay," Colin said. "Now what?"

She walked to the back of the truck, opening it up. There were four other motorcycles inside, and room for two more. "Load 'em up, and then let's get moving. There's a hiding space underneath for you two. There's some protein bars in there for you. I was told to make sure I brought you some food."

"Bless you," Colin said sincerely.


	4. Stalker

Isabella came up out of the hidden compartment and stretched. She'd been concealed down there for several hours, and had heard the military investigating inside the truck at least twice. Fortunately, they'd never found the hidden latch that opened the compartments.

"Sorry that took so long," Juliet said. "We had to get you well past where they were looking."

"Beats the hell out of getting caught, eh?" Colin said, coming out of his own compartment and chewing on a protein bar.

"Where are we?" Isabella asked.

"Southern Minnesota," Juliet answered. "I leave you here, taking the motorcycles, and Stalker will get in contact with you for your next step. I don't know, I don't want to know."

"Understood," Colin said.

They came out into a small warehouse, boxes and crates piled high around them. An office sat to one side, unoccupied. "Go wait in there," Juliet said, closing the back of the truck and sliding the ramp back inside.

She gave them a thumbs-up as she climbed back into the truck. It started with a cough and drove out of the warehouse; the door closed behind it immediately afterwards.

The office was small and cluttered, with papers and folders lying around haphazardly. A row of three filing cabinets filled the far wall. Two chairs sat at a desk with three computers sitting on top.

Isabella took one chair, kicking up her feet on the desk next to where she set her helmet. Colin shook his head as he sat in the other chair, leaning forward.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. I've just..." He looked up at her, and she saw that his expression was shadowed. "I'd never killed anyone before tonight. I could hand-wave away the train derailment, but the soldiers at the air base..."

She sat up, taking her feet off the desk, and reached forward to take his hand. "I get it. I remember my first..." She paused as the memory washed over her again.

"What happened?" he asked, as if trying to distract himself from his own thoughts.

"I was targeting a Dixie researcher," she said. "He was working on a poison gas of some sort." She smiled thinly. "I got into the computers, sealed his lab, and he died from it. It looked like an accident, and I'm not sure they ever realized I'd been there. But I had to watch him through the security cameras to make sure he was dead. His eyes, at the end...he looked sad. I always wondered if he regretted what he was working on as he died."

"I heard the screams," Colin said quietly. "People getting burned alive. I'm not sure that will ever go away."

"Ever's a long time."

"Does it get easier?"

"They blur. Not sure if that's easier or not."

"Oscars One and Two, this is Stalker," a voice said from their helmets.

Isabella picked hers up and put it on. "Oscar One. What's next?"

"Another truck will be along in four minutes. It'll take you to your next stop."

"Thank you," she said.

* * *

Irving sat back and watched the trucks move. He did a lot of work keeping the Underground Railroad running, and some of the trucks that had smuggled slaves up to Canada could now smuggle Canadian soldiers into the heartland.

He pulled up another connection, and said, "Charlie One from Stalker."

"Charlie One. Give me good news," the voice from the other end said in its British accent. Charlie One was the contact in Canada who was watching Oscars One and Two. He wasn't sure if they knew at the far end, but Irving recognized the voice of Ferb from growing up in Danville.

"They made it to the first drop-off, and should be here in another couple hours."

"Thank you."

"Not a problem. Charlie One out."

* * *

Colin climbed out of the sleeper area of the cab, nodding to the driver, who'd called himself Elvis. They'd ridden along in his truck for several hours, getting a bit of sleep in the process, and eating some snack food he'd provided.

Isabella followed him, and they found themselves in another warehouse. This one was larger, and the morning sun shone in through the windows at the top of the building. "This way," a tall Hispanic man said, gesturing them into a stairwell.

They climbed down into a tunnel that led, as far as Colin could tell, away from the warehouse. The tunnel was grey and sparsely lit, but clean.

The Hispanic man knocked on a door at the far end. A voice on the far side said something Colin didn't quite hear, and the Hispanic man muttered a response. The door unlocked with a _*click*_ , and the man gestured them in.

Inside was a small computer center - several racks of servers, and a few desks with monitors and keyboards. It was chilly inside, and he could hear the fans of a cooling system running. A short man with closely-cropped red-orange hair stood by the door, smiling. "Come on in!" he said enthusiastically. Colin recognized his voice as that of Stalker.

"You must be Oscar Two," he said, shaking Colin's hand. His grip was a bit clammy but firm. "And you must be Oscar One," he said to Isabella, grasping her hand next. "I'm Stalker, and I do logistics and tech support and...well, a bunch of other stuff for the Anti-Slavery Front."

"Where are we?" Isabella asked. "Or don't I want to know?"

"It's probably better off if you don't," Stalker said. "But I'll tell you anyway. We're in Minnesota. Minneapolis, actually."

Colin sighed.

"It's okay," Stalker continued. "If they catch you two, I'm already doomed, so it doesn't really matter if I tell you."

"So what do we do now?" Isabella asked.

"Right now, you should probably get some rest. You guys have had a long night, I bet. There's cots in there," Stalker said, pointing at a door to one side.

Isabella yawned. "Sounds good." Colin followed her to the door. Inside was a small room with four cots laid out, with pillows and blankets. A small door at one end was labelled, "Bathroom".

"I need that," Colin said, heading toward the door.

"Damn. Fine. Hurry up, then," Isabella said. "I need it too."

* * *

"So, what do you think, Archer?" General Sumner asked.

Archer pulled out a map with markings on it. "My guess is Minneapolis, since that seems to be a center of ASF activity. Could be Sioux Falls, though, or any of the little ASF safe houses scattered through the countryside. No real way to bring her to ground."

"Hm. Guesses on what she does next?"

"I'm actually not sure, General. If she has a way to get in contact with Canada, they may bring her back, or they could send her...anywhere, really. They could send her to Chicago, for all I know."

"That possibility has crossed our minds, yes. We're increasing security here and have put out a Be On The Lookout alert with her picture."

"Do we still have any informers inside the ASF?"

"Not at a high level. We're pretty sure they found the person who told us about the recording of you. We haven't heard from them since, at least."

"Have the Canadians done anything else?"

"Somehow - we're not sure how - the New York staging area blew up, taking out the supplies intended for the attack on Montreal." General Sumner shook his head, annoyed.

"Huh. Have we sent anyone into Canadian territory yet?"

"We tried sneaking some stealth bombers in, but air defense caught them. We were lucky to get half of them back across the border."

"What's the internal situation for us?"

"Protests are getting worse. Bailey's video is viral in Southwest, and becoming more known nationwide. He just sent out a second video, and it's catching on even faster. There's calls for the President to resign."

"Phil would die first."

"I know, Archer." General Sumner sat back, thinking. "Actually, do you think he's her target? I mean, she is an expert assassin."

"Unlikely. Phil's too hard to get to, and he's really just a figurehead."

"Granted, but taking him out would be a huge hit to our morale, and a big boost to theirs. Go take a look for weaknesses there."

"Will do, Sir."

* * *

It was early evening when Isabella woke up. Colin was still sleeping in the cot across from her, and Stalker had crashed in one of the other cots.

She used the bathroom, taking a moment to brush out her hair. _I really should cut it_ , she thought. She'd let it grow out a bit after Phineas had bought her. He liked it longer, but right now, it was a liability. _Bleaching it might not be a bad idea either, actually._

It was likely the ASF had things lying around she could use for disguises. The soldiers had recognized her in Grand Forks, so she needed something to make it harder for them to do it again.

She quietly slipped out of the bathroom. Colin and Stalker were still sleeping, so she went out into the computer room.

The computers were busily running something, but she couldn't tell quite what, and didn't want to risk disturbing them. Instead, she pulled her earpiece from her pocket and put it in, turning it on.

"Oscar One, anyone there?" she said. There was a moment with no response. "Anyone from Oscar One, is there anyone out there?"

"Oscar One from Charlie One," Ferb's voice said. "Good to hear your voice."

"Likewise, Charlie One. How's Charlie Two doing?" She knew Phineas would be worried about her.

"Better, knowing you're okay."

"Likewise. What are our next orders?"

"Is Stalker there? He's supposed to brief you when you're ready."

"He's asleep. I'll wait for him, then."

"That would be best, yes."

"Signing off, then. Take care."

"You too."

She pulled the earpiece back out and put it back in her pocket. She pulled a small pad of paper from her pocket and added to her list of desired additions to her implants: **Communicator**.

The door from the sleeping room swung open, and Stalker came in, yawning. "Sleep okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"A bit. Long night last night, getting you here safely."

"Thanks for everything. Charlie One said you've got our next mission?"

"Yeah, let's wait for Oscar Two to wake up first, though."

She chatted a bit with Stalker while they waited. It turned out his name was Irving, he'd known Phineas and Ferb from when they were kids, and he had picked the codename because of how he'd been a bit of a stalker toward them before they'd gone off into their work for the military. Now he put that ability in controlling computers and video feeds to fight against slavery, and against the American government that had reinstated it. He'd been working on tracking down proof of the Council of Sanford when Holly had sent them her audio. Somebody within the ASF had leaked info about it to the Council, and after Holly had been arrested, Irving had tracked down the leaker. ASF Security had dealt with them in some way that he hadn't asked for details about.

"You two are chatty," Colin said, coming through the door.

"Excellent, you're awake," Stalker said. "You ready to talk about the next mission?"

"Sure," Colin said, pulling up a chair. "What's the plan?"

"Each of you has a different job this time," Stalker said. "Oscar One is working on getting us into Chicago's systems. There's a constant data feed out of the New White House that we've been trying to track down."

Isabella nodded. "Sounds good. Think it's their tactical plan?"

"We're really not sure, but it's a big enough transfer, running constantly, that it's got to be really important."

"Okay. Any idea where it's going?"

"We've traced it going south out of Chicago, but that's all we've been able to do. More than that will need on-site access from a government computer with the appropriate access certificates." Stalker shrugged. "As for you, Oscar Two, we need you to take out the primary transmission center for the government video feeds. We have control of the computers in the secondary center, but haven't been able to get into the primary. If you can take out the primary center in Batavia, we can drop in our own video at a critical moment."

Colin leaned forward. "Makes sense. Do you have a plan for this?"

"Nope. But I've got a map of the building for you to make your own plan."

"That'll do," Colin said.

"Do you have any hair bleach?" Isabella asked. "I think I need a bit of a disguise."

* * *

Since they were going in more or less the same direction, Colin and Isabella were traveling together. He was letting her drive while he kept in contact with Stalker. They'd had to wait until morning, as the highways were under curfew except for cargo traffic due to the war footing.

Stalker had given them false identification as a married couple from St. Paul, driving to Chicago to attend a friend's birthday party. The Monday morning traffic through the Twin Cities had been rough, but once they'd gotten away on the interstate highway, traffic had flowed more smoothly.

Colin had watched Isabella smoothly lie her way through the checkpoints. That was the other reason she was driving. She didn't look much like the pictures he saw posted at the first checkpoint - they'd bleached her much-shorter hair and dyed it a honey-blonde. A pair of fake glasses and makeup to lighten her skin, and she looked much more Irish than Mexican-Jewish. Stalker had even helped add some fake freckles to improve the effect.

Colin wasn't sure what he thought of Stalker. He wasn't really Colin's type, but...he'd been very helpful, and Colin felt an odd fondness for him. He kind of reminded Colin of Phineas, in a way, but with a bit more edge to him. Phineas was, ultimately, a very nice guy. Stalker could be vicious when needed.

The car radio played some sort of news station that they'd tuned to while trying to get through traffic. An idiotic talk show was on, with people arguing about whether the Canadians should be shot or enslaved. He flipped to another channel, which was playing gospel music. The next had bubblegum pop. He was about to change it again when the song ended, and the DJ said, "Big news, folks. The Supreme Court ruling in P&S Productions vs. United States has come in, and it's a doozy. 7 to 2 ruling that Central soldiers convicted of treason and sentenced to slavery by Dixie and Columbia courts were not automatically pardoned. All former POWs who weren't released by their owners are to be collared again. The President has said he will not be issuing blanket pardons today, but is willing to consider individual cases."

"Holy shit," Isabella whispered. "I'm glad Ginger got clear."

"Hm?" Colin asked.

"Ginger, a friend of mine from Danville. She was a Central soldier who got captured by Dixie and used for slave gang-bang porn. She got out of the country a few weeks ago, going to Uruguay. Holly told me."

"Wait, what? Slave gang-bang porn? That isn't really a thing, is it?"

Isabella smiled thinly. "It's horrifying, but it's a thing. They cast her as a Central secret agent trying to sneak into Dixie bases. The soldiers would catch her, and..."

"You don't need to elaborate. So they're willingly sending some of their soldiers back to shit like that?

"Apparently."

"This is going to trash Central morale, isn't it?"

"Oh, hell yeah. The timing's really bad on their part."

"Tragic."

* * *

Ferb sat at the console. A few minor skirmishes had happened on the border, but neither side seemed to want to escalate yet. Air defense systems were keeping bombers - and everything else in the air - well away from the borders. The American Air Force had attempted to end-run the Canadian defenses by sending long-range bombers well out over the Atlantic and back, but they'd been met by Canadian interceptors and forced back at ruinous losses. They didn't have a lot of long-range bombers to use anyway, as they hadn't been useful during the Civil War.

They'd launched another round of cruise missiles, with conventional warheads, and some of them had gotten through. Similarly, special forces on both sides had sabotaged key locations. Isabella and Colin had ruined Grand Forks for weeks, and CSOR had taken out the upstate New York staging area for the attack on Montreal. The staging area near Buffalo for the attack on Toronto was proving harder to crack, but Phineas had given more-advanced stealth tech onto a few cruise missiles, along with tumbler warheads. It was hoped that the psychological effect would be enough to convince the Americans to back down, although Ferb wasn't optimistic.

Unfortunately, they didn't have time to set up a full tumbler warhead assembly line, so they only had the few warheads Phineas was able to build on his own. To an extent, it didn't matter, because Canada's production of cruise missiles was just starting to ramp up.

Politically, the situation was a mess. The word "sitzkrieg" kept coming to mind. The American Congress was waffling on a declaration of war, as was the Canadian Parliament. Both of them were trying to convince the European Union that the other had started it, and it was felt that whoever declared war first would lose that argument. Mexico, on the other hand, was fully mobilizing, and it was clear that an American declaration of war would be followed by a second front opening immediately. Most of the American forces that were free to deploy were in the Southwest now, and the Mexican movements were making it difficult for the Americans to pull them away for use against Canada.

The Prime Minister, as far as Ferb could tell from what Vanessa told him, was hoping he could still convince everyone to back down. Ferb couldn't really blame him, to be honest. Protests were getting worse in America, and there were reports that troops were refusing to stop it. They were claiming it was because there was no declaration of war, but there were rumors that it was because of how many of their number had just been re-collared by the Supreme Court's ruling.

Phineas came in, his eyes hollow. He looked like he hadn't slept for two days - which he probably hadn't. "How we doin'?" he asked.

Ferb smiled at him. "No change. Go get some sleep."

"Can't. Too much to do."

"You'll do better if you sleep."

"Bed's too lonely," he said quietly.

Ferb nodded. "Talk to the base infirmary. They can give you something to help you sleep."

Vanessa walked in, talking on her phone. "Preston, I'm fine. Get those implants shipped here, we've got more soldiers waiting..." She paused, and smiled. "Excellent." She covered the phone and looked at Phineas. "The next round of implants is on its way, should arrive tomorrow. They'll cover the rest of the platoon." She frowned, looking into his face. "I'm not letting you have them until you get some sleep, though."

Phineas sighed deeply and nodded, conceding defeat. "Fine." He stumbled out the door.

Vanessa put the phone back to her ear. "Seriously, Preston, you're in more danger there than I am." She rolled her eyes at whatever he was saying. "I'm staying here. I swear, you're worse than my mother." Another pause, and her eyes hardened. "Oh. Is that it? Fine. Tell my mother to get off my fucking back, then. You can quote me. I'm serious, Preston...what was that? Preston? Preston?" She looked at the phone. "The line just went dead."

Ferb turned back to his console, where red lights were flashing. "Cruise missile strikes in Quebec, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and...Toronto." He brought up more detail on the Toronto strike. "Direct hit on the Doofenshmirtz Biosciences building," he said quietly.

" _Mon dieu_ ," she whispered. "I...my people..."

"Do what you need to do," Ferb said. "I'll talk to Colonel Scott about where we can evacuate them to."

"Thanks, Ferb," she said, picking up her phone to start managing recovery efforts.

* * *

Adyson walked along with the protesters, her prosthetic leg hardly slowing her down. They'd gathered in Memorial Park, where the Shatter Day bombing had been, to protest the Supreme Court's ruling. Adyson had been half expecting the ruling, ever since Ginger had left.

She was glad Ginger had left. The porn producer that had owned her had been the lead plaintiff for the case, and the people they had previously owned would be the first affected. Indeed, just minutes after the ruling came down, Adyson had gotten a phone call from somebody in Atlanta trying to find Ginger. Adyson had claimed ignorance, hoping to make them waste time. The more time they wasted trying to find Ginger before they learned she'd escaped to Uruguay, the more time any other victims would have to escape.

"Freedom for Americans! Freedom for all!" the crowd chanted. "No more collars!"

Off to one side of the park, a troop of soldiers started marching toward them. They blocked off that side of the park, and started moving around it, trying to surround the protesters.

Adyson nodded. Catalina had said that was the expected response, and had given suggestions on how to deal with them.

Adyson stepped out in front of the soldiers, along with several dozen other people around her. They hadn't needed to discuss it - they all saw the problem together. If they let the soldiers surround the park, they might all get arrested.

"Step aside, citizen," a rough-looking man with sergeant's stripes said. He stepped forward so he was practically toe to toe with Adyson, looking down at her. He was at least six inches taller than her.

"Right to peaceably assemble," one of the other protesters said from behind Adyson.

"There's a war on. Rights are suspended," the sergeant rumbled. "Step aside. This is not a request."

"Congress hasn't declared war," Adyson said, staring up at him.

"Step. Aside. Last warning." He reached out, as if to push her out of the way.

"How many soldiers in your platoon got collared again, Sergeant?" Adyson asked.

His hand froze in midair.

She continued, "How many good American soldiers are getting raped and beaten tonight because the generals don't give a shit about you? Because the President can't bear the thought of pardoning them? Because they committed the horrible crime of fighting by your side and getting captured by the enemy?"

The sergeant's mouth opened, and closed, as his hand dropped back to his side. The soldiers behind him didn't quite take a step back, but they looked at each other warily.

"How many, sergeant? Are you next?" she asked quietly.

He swallowed, looking down at her. "Step aside," he whispered.

"Join us. Fight for your country," she said. "Freedom for Americans. Freedom for all. How many, sergeant?"

"None in my platoon," he whispered. "None in this platoon. They're all too new."

"How many in your old platoon?" she asked.

His eyes were filled with pain. "Too many."

Behind him, the soldiers who had been following him were shifting back. Adyson saw that the soldiers were retreating all around the crowd as it was pointed out that their own comrades were now being returned to slavery.

"I get it," Adyson said. "The only reason one of my best friends isn't getting collared today is because she got out of the country. Join us."

"I can't. Yet," the sergeant said. "Be careful. Next time they'll probably shoot first."

"We know. Thank you for listening first."


	5. Missions

Colin sat on the hill overlooking the primary broadcast center. After Isabella had dropped him off, going on to her own mission, he'd picked up another small car for transportation. The car was parked a mile or so back, and he had come the rest of the way on foot.

This hill gave a good vantage point that let him compare the center to the map he'd planned against the night before. The center sat in a small valley, well away from other buildings, with one road leading in. A barbed-wire fence surrounded it, with a wide area of well-lit pavement between the fence and any buildings. _That's the main entrance, and that's the freight entrance, and that's the primary satellite dish. The main fiber line runs right along that road._

He'd been told that this was once a high-energy physics lab, before they'd lost funding due to the civil war. The combination of open space and high-speed network connections made this a near-ideal spot for the primary broadcast center.

They'd decided a three-pronged strategy would be best for taking the broadcast center out with minimal casualties and minimal chance of getting caught. The fiber line that carried most of the data was easiest to hit, but easiest to fix. The satellite dish and power system were more permanent solutions.

Slightly.

His hands automatically checked his gear. DIMMER pistol with 5 rounds and one extra clip. Four small packs of explosive - one for each target, and a spare in case he found another thing that would be better off not existing.

His plan to get in had made sense when he'd thought it through back in Minneapolis, but looking down at the center, he saw that his chance of getting across to the building unobserved was pretty much zero.

Or was it?

Several of the floodlights were out, he could see. They left shadowed patches on the pavement, more visible now as the sky got darker. He pulled out his binoculars and took a closer look.

Ah. They were a trap, he could see that now. There was an opening in the fence near the shadowy patches. He was sure that going through that opening would alert the guards to intercept him.

He smiled. That would work in his favor, he thought. They'd expect any attacker to take the bait.

Instead, he'd make the security measures work against them. He slipped down toward the fence, slowly, pulling out the smallest one of his explosive packs. He found the power coupling for the electric fence, and placed the explosive underneath it, with a remote-controlled detonator. He slithered back, trailing along toward the main gate.

He hid near the gate, waiting. After about twenty minutes, a truck came along the road, heading for the gate. As it approached the gate, he crawled closer, bringing his implants up to speed.

The gate opened, and he pushed the button on his detonator. The explosion was indistinguishable from the sparking and arcing from the power coupling as all power to the fence - including the gate - gave out. The gate screeched to a stop halfway open.

"Fuckin' piece of shit!" a rough male voice, one of the guards, said. "You two, go take a look at it."

Colin smiled as half of the gate's guards trotted off toward the power coupling at the fence corner. The other two came out through the half-open gate and went to talk to the driver.

Colin took the opportunity to crawl underneath the truck. Its ground clearance was high enough to keep him off the ground as he grabbed onto parts of the frame.

"Sorry, the gate blew again. Give us a minute to push it aside," the guard said to the driver.

"Hurry up, I gotta get this piece of shit back to Chicago tonight," the driver muttered.

The guards grunted, and with a long scraping sound, the gate started to move. They paused, breathing heavily. "Fuckin' A. This thing's fuckin' heavy," one said.

Colin heard two more sets of footsteps coming back. "It's worse than usual - damn near blew itself up. No chance it'll be back before morning," a female voice said.

"Quit yappin' and help us move this fuckin' thing," the rough male voice said. More scraping followed. "Can you get through that?" he asked.

"Good enough," the driver said. The truck clunked into gear and started forward, trundling through the broken gate. Colin clung to it all the way around to the freight entrance, where it backed in; his implants kept his arms from getting tired, which could be fatal right about now.

The truck clunked to a stop at a loading dock and the driver climbed out. Colin peered out around himself. There weren't any other trucks at the freight entrance at this hour, and it didn't sound like there were very many people.

"Whaddya got for us?" a female voice asked.

"I don't ask, corporal, I just pick it up there and drive it here," the driver said. "Ask questions and you end up as cargo yourself."

She gave a tense laugh, sharp and bitter. "Ain't that the fuckin' truth," she said.

Colin dropped down and crawled to the back of the truck. Peering out of the darkness, through the gap between the truck and the dock, he could see that the driver was handing paperwork to the corporal. Neither was looking in his direction. Good enough. He slipped out from under the truck, quickly looking around to make sure there were no unexpected watchers. From the building plans, he knew there was one camera in here, but it couldn't see the area underneath the loading dock. He pressed himself to the loading dock and slid along the edge, keeping himself in the shadowed darkness until he reached the next staircase up.

The next part was risky. He had to hope they weren't watching the camera that closely. Fortunately, not much light made it down the staircase, so he kicked the implants to full and leapt across as quickly as he could. Hopefully, even if anyone saw it, it would be ignored as just a glitch in the system.

He crept across to the end of the loading dock, which, if he had read the building plans right, wasn't really covered by the security camera. Quickly, he poked his head up, checking where everything was. The security camera sat on the wall, looking out toward the rest of the loading dock, unable to look low enough to see him. The driver and the corporal were busily pulling pallets off of the truck.

They walked back onto the truck, and he slipped along the edge of the loading dock, back out to the pavement around the building. The outside of the building was rough concrete, mostly low and flat buildings. He crouched down, then leapt, his implant-enhanced muscles getting him even further up than he expected. He grabbed the edge of the roof and pushed himself up, rolling onto the flat roof as quietly as he could. He paused a moment, hearing implants maxed, listening for anyone who might have noticed him.

There was no response, as far as he could tell. There were no cameras up here - after all, how could an enemy get up here without being spotted? The rest would be easy.

The satellite dish got the largest explosive pack. He silently snuck over to where the power lines came into the building, which was just above the generator that stood below. The second-largest explosive pack went there. The fiber lines could wait a bit.

He snuck back to the loading dock, hoping luck was on his side. He peered down into it - the truck was still there. Grinning, he dropped back down to ground level, then waited for them to go in for another pallet to sneak back inside.

He crawled back under the truck just as the last pallet was unloaded. "That's all of 'em," the corporal said.

"Sign here," the driver said. A pen scratched, paper tore, and the driver came down the steps. "Pleasure doin' business with ya," he said.

Colin grabbed onto the truck frame again, just as the truck came back to life. It clunked into gear, trundling back out of the loading dock and across the wide pavement around the building. It slowed at the gate, then accelerated again as it passed through.

As the truck drove away from the gate, he pulled the last explosive back out and tossed it to the side of the road. The fiber ran right next to the road here, so when it went off, it should cut all the lines and make them very hard to repair.

He held onto the truck until it came to the traffic light at the end of the road, then let go.

Or, rather, he tried to. His implants had locked a bit, and didn't want to release. He struggled for a bit, then turned them off.

 _Ow!_ He kept himself from shouting, but not by much, as he let go. His hands felt cramped as he hit the pavement under the truck, then quickly rolled off to the side, out from under the truck and off the road.

He lay there, not moving, as he kicked in the pain-control implants. The truck clunked into gear and rolled away as the light turned green.

He sat up, slipping away from the intersection and back toward the hill. He turned his arm implants back on, but his arm froze in position again, unable to move until he again deactivated them. _Well, that sucks,_ he thought.

The leg implants were fine, though, as were the rest, and he got to the hill quickly in the darkening night. Everything looked quiet below. The guards were huddled by the open gate, cursing.

He took out his detonator and pushed the remaining three buttons at once.

The satellite dish blew into pieces, scattering metal shards over a wide area. Meanwhile, a phenomenal blast hit the generator and power lines, and all the lights around the building went dark. A small blast came from the road nearby, as well, but a secondary blast near the generator was louder than the other three combined. He had hoped for that, but hadn't been able to count on it. If it had gone well, the fuel oil for the generator should have spilled out of a shattered storage tank, and lingering flames could then set off the fumes.

Emergency sirens and lights came on inside the dark building, and Colin turned around to begin the long trot back to his car.

* * *

Isabella sat in the dark alley, waiting. The small guard shack across the street seemed unimportant - a minor security checkpoint controlling access to a relatively insecure parking lot outside a non-military government building. But she knew how the Central faction had their authentication systems set up, and the united American government had inherited them. And so, once the guards left for the night...

The light inside the guard shack turned off, and the two guards walked over to their cars. A moment later, they'd driven off. The street was quiet as the evening traffic died down. This area was mostly industrial and offices, so once people went home, things got fairly quiet.

Isabella stood up and stretched, running her fingers through her hair. It felt stiff and brittle from the bleaching, but it had been necessary. The military was looking for someone with black hair down to her back. Honey-blonde shoulder-length hair made her look completely different.

She came out of the alley casually, keeping an eye out around her. A few pedestrians and cars, but not much else. She walked down to an all-night hot dog stand on the corner, getting three Chicago dogs and a Coke.

She pondered while she ate. Now that the guard shack was unoccupied, she'd be fine as soon as she got inside. Getting inside was the problem. She could pick the lock easily enough, and once she was inside she could stay low, below the line of sight of anyone walking by.

The problem was not being noticed while she was picking the lock. The street was quiet, but not quiet enough.

The sound of sirens approached, coming down the major cross-street. She froze for a moment, wondering if they'd found her after all, but she managed to keep from reflexively activating her implants. She was going to need all the energy she could get.

Two police cars raced past, lights and sirens fully active, followed by a fire truck.

The hot dog vendor whistled low under his breath as he looked at his phone. "Damn," he muttered.

She swallowed a bit of hot dog and asked, "What happened?"

"Fuckin' Canucks blew up the broadcast center outside the city. They think it was some crazy ex-pat special ops soldier that defected."

"Seriously? Shit," Isabella said. "They got a picture of the asshole?"

"Here," the vendor said, holding up his phone. It was a picture of Isabella, long black hair and all.

"Huh. Haven't seen her. Hope they nail her to the fuckin' wall," Isabella said.

"Me too." He shook his head as more police cars wailed past.

 _Nice work, Colin_ , she thought. _You might have just given me the break I needed._ She finished her Coke and tossed her trash in the nearby bin. She crossed the street to the far side, walking toward the guard shack. Sirens howled past as, presumably, all the nearby police were pulled in to catch someone they weren't actually looking for.

* * *

Colin sat in stopped traffic, slowly crawling toward the hastily-placed security checkpoint. He'd hoped he could get away from the broadcast center before they got security cordons in place, but they'd reacted more quickly than he expected.

The radio talked about the mysterious explosions at the broadcast center, and gave a description of Isabella as the likely culprit. They wouldn't be looking for him, fortunately, although it was possible Isabella would have a tough time.

 _Hopefully, my fake papers are good enough_ , he thought.

The car in front of him pulled away, and the police officer at the barricade waved him forward. She was a stocky Asian woman, and she shone her flashlight in his face as soon as he stopped.

"License," she asked in a bored voice.

He handed her his fake driver's license, which she glanced at briefly before pressing it to the scanner next to her. _I guess this is when I find out if Stalker made these solid enough in their servers._

The scanner beeped and a light flashed green. She pulled the license away and handed it back to him. "Thank you, officer," he said in his most neutral voice, and she waved him through.

He kept from sighing in relief until he had the window back up and had accelerated away from the blockade. _Let's hope Isabella's doing as well on her end._

* * *

Isabella crouched in the small guard shack, cursing. She'd had it all worked out - she could get in here, and the computer systems in here would give her enough access to get into more important government systems, which she could leverage into even more important systems, until she could trace the rogue data flow from the White House all the way to its destination.

Except the computer system in here was too low-clearance for what she needed. This building's security was so low-priority that they didn't have the network access for high-quality identification checks.

She peeked up, at the office building behind the parking lot. She could get in there. They'd almost certainly have the network access she needed in there. Almost certainly.

Not absolutely certainly, given how low the security was out here. And she had no idea how hard it would be to get into the building without getting caught.

She peeked out at the street, making sure the coast was clear. The bombing of the broadcast center and the subsequent police movement in that direction had drawn people off the streets here, and there wasn't anyone nearby. She popped the latch on the shack and slipped out, standing up and hurrying back onto the sidewalk, unnoticed. She shook her head and tried to figure out another option.

Her car was parked a few blocks away; going back there to regroup seemed like her best plan. She was so distracted by thoughts of what she needed to do that she didn't notice the flashing lights until the police SUV behind her blipped its siren, making her jump.

She stopped walking and looked back at it, cursing at herself internally, pushing up her fake glasses and squinting at the police SUV. Two officers got out and approached her. She noticed that there were no other people in the area, which seemed very odd.

"Didn't you hear, miss? Curfew declared for tonight because of the bombing," one of the officers said, a tall Hispanic man with a thick mustache.

"I didn't hear," she said. "I'm sorry, I was just walking. My boyfriend broke up with me, and..." She gave them a thin smile and tried to look like she was trying not to tear up.

"Where do you live?" the other officer asked. He was white, just a little shorter than his partner, with broad shoulders and a pencil mustache.

"Up on 17th," she said, waving her hand in that direction as she gave an address matching her fake ID.

"That's a long walk," the shorter officer said. "Would you like a ride?"

"My car's parked at 5th and Walker," she said. "Not that far."

"Still under curfew, so you shouldn't be driving. I think we'd need to insist on driving you home. You can catch a cab to pick up your car tomorrow," the taller officer said.

"That'd be great," she said. "Sorry to cause you trouble."

"No trouble at all. You'll have to ride in the back, unfortunately."

She shrugged, while screaming a bit inside. Getting into the back of a police cruiser seemed like a colossally bad idea, but she didn't have an easy way to get out of it right now. They hadn't searched her, which was good, as it would quickly turn up her palmtop computer and DIMMER pistol, currently hiding inside her jacket.

The shorter officer held the door open for her, and she climbed in.

"So, what caused the breakup?" the shorter officer, in the passenger seat, asked.

She shrugged. "He decided he liked a redhead with bigger tits more than me."

"Damn. That's cold," the driver said.

"I thought he might be the one," she said, trying to almost-but-not-quite tear up again.

"Lots of fish in the sea," the passenger said.

"How did you become police officers?" she asked, as if trying to change the subject.

"Ex-military. After we did our tours, there's a veteran's preference," the passenger said.

"Did you serve?" the driver asked.

"Yeah, I was in ops. Paper pushing," Isabella said.

"Lucky you. Pretty rough at the front lines," the driver said. The officer in the passenger seat grunted agreement.

"Did you get any bounties for capturing people?" she asked.

The two sighed deeply, almost in unison. "Nah, the officers stole all of that," the passenger said.

"And then...Jesus," the driver said, pounding the steering wheel.

"Sorry," Isabella said.

"Not your fault. That fucking Supreme Court decision..." the passenger trailed off.

"The President could fix it. Pardon 'em all," the driver said.

"I know. I know," the passenger sighed.

"Did you know people who were affected?" Isabella asked. Sowing distrust of the government among the police wasn't technically part of her mission, but every little bit could help.

"Yeah, we had this guy...been with the department for three years now," the passenger said. "Got caught by the Cummies at Pittsburgh, and they were using him for factory labor. After the surrender, he got discharged, so he joined the department. Got a new wife, had a kid a couple months ago. And they put a fucking collar on him again."

"Fuckin' assholes," the driver said.

"David 14, status?" came over the radio.

The passenger picked up the microphone. "Transporting a civilian out after curfew. Almost there."

"Drop them off and resume patrol, David 14."

"Will do." He put the microphone back. "Where can we drop you off?"

"Just ahead," Isabella said. "That parking lot on the right."

"Sounds good," the driver said. He pulled in, and one of the officers got out to help her out of the back seat.

"Thank you both," she said as she stood up. She looked around - there were lit windows looking over the lot, and between that and the car's dashcam, she probably couldn't take them down without it being noticed. She waved at them as she walked toward the building to one side; they waved back and drove off.

Once they were gone, she walked past the nearby apartment building, ducking into the alley on the other side. "Stalker from Oscar One," she whispered into her microphone. "I'm on 17th near Riverside, and need somewhere I can get into the government networks near here. There's a curfew out."

There was a pause, and then Irving came on the radio. "Roger, Oscar One. Give me a moment."

* * *

"Jesus. Primary broadcast center is down for months, Archer," General Sumner said. "So what's the plan?"

"Not sure, Sir," Archer said, sitting back in his chair. "I'd expect them to try to break in and broadcast things. Taking out the primary center doesn't really help that."

"Maybe they were going to sneak in and got caught?"

"Nobody saw the attacker. Nobody saw anything, although we have confirmation of explosives on the fence's power coupling now."

"Same type as the other three, I assume?"

"Same type as the two we can be sure on. Residue from the blast that took out the generator is hard to find, given the fire when the fuel oil went up."

General Sumner shook his head. "So why take out the broadcast center like that?"

"How good's the security on the backup?" Archer asked.

"We've boosted it, certainly. Maybe that's it - they've got a mole they think they can get in with the added troops."

Archer thought for a moment. That didn't sound right, but he couldn't come up with a better answer right now.

* * *

Irving stretched his hands out in front of him, then smiled as he brought up the back door he'd planted in the secondary broadcast center. He wasn't ready to use it yet - no sense in running anything tonight. Tomorrow, on the other hand, during prime time...

The secondary broadcast center was his now. All of it. And even once they found him, they'd have a heck of a time getting control back from him.

More likely they'd fall back to an emergency center of some sort. Next goal: take those over as well.

He closed down the window with the connection into the secondary center, and brought up some internal government documents on emergency response.

"Stalker from Oscar Two," a voice said over the radio.

"Stalker here, go," he responded.

"Mission complete. Tell Charlie Two that my Obelisk system is having problems."

"Oh, my," Irving said. "Will do. What's the problem?"

"Upper-body muscular enhancement is stuck. It doesn't move."

Irving had a sudden image of Oscar Two - an attractive, muscular man, certainly - stuck in a flexing pose. It certainly wasn't an _unwelcome_ thought, but it wasn't exactly appropriate for the moment.

"I'll let Charlie Two know. Good work."

"Thanks. Hear back from Oscar One yet?"

"Yeah, her first plan didn't work out, so I pointed her toward a backup."

* * *

Isabella cursed Stalker in every language she knew, then started making up new languages just to find new ways to curse him.

"All this to connect into the government network," she muttered, connecting her palmtop into the wiring nexus as she wished her implants included a way to turn off her sense of smell.

The nexus, unfortunately, was on the roof of a cramped sewer tunnel. She'd had to climb down into the tunnel, then along for what felt like forever, before she had gotten to the right spot. Fortunately, there had been a ledge she could maneuver along that was mostly above the level of the sewage.

Mostly. Her shoes were a bit damp and smelly.

The last connection went in, and she brought up the palmtop. She typed a few commands in, and smiled as she saw that this nexus was within the secure network perimeter.

 _Okay, Stalker, you're forgiven._

It took just a few moments to quietly scan the network neighborhood to find vulnerable systems she could use to escalate her privilege levels. A nearby Veteran's Affairs hospital seemed likely, as it would have access to military personnel records. A few moments later, she had inserted herself into its systems silently. Its outbound link took her to a military database system - she bypassed the database itself as likely to be too heavily monitored, but she knew Central had a tendency to reuse application servers, and...

 _Jackpot._

The application server was also used to manage network monitoring systems, and therefore had fairly extensive network access. She slowly teased her way into it, finally getting a legitimate administrative credential. With that, she quickly leapt over to the interconnect where the White House data flow had been spotted. It was still there, bouncing to an unknown system that was, she was sure, alarmed to the gills. One poke could have their sysadmins tracking her back here in moments.

That was okay. She didn't need the system itself. She was just trying to follow the data flow, and the monitoring systems she could get to were plenty sufficient. That much data going in must lead to a similar amount going out, unless she'd found the final destination.

She followed the flow from system to system, not really paying attention to where exactly in the network she was, until she hit one that didn't have a matched outflow. She paused - this node had a lot of data going in, but hardly any going out at all.

 _Okay, where is this?_

She pulled up the network mappings, and her eyes went wide.

 _Oh._

Hurriedly, she disconnected herself from the network, wiping out any traces behind her. That crawling sensation at the back of her neck wasn't a good sign, and while she didn't think they'd noticed her, she really didn't want to be here any longer if they had. She may be in a sewer right now, but it was nothing compared to how much shit she'd be in for trying to hack Sanford Central.


	6. Escalation

"This is insane," Ferb said.

Phineas ignored him and put more gear into a backpack that sat on his desk.

"We cannot risk sending you into American territory, Phineas," Ferb said. "We'll bring Colin back across the border and..."

Phineas looked up, sharply. "How are you going to get him across the border, Ferb? There's a war on."

Ferb rolled his eyes. "And how are you going to get across?"

"Stealth hovercar. I'll be fine."

"We can send somebody less critical to fetch him. It'll be fine."

"I can do this, Ferb."

"Phineas, we cannot afford to lose you," Ferb said. "Even for a few hours if you could simply go there and back."

Phineas paused as Ferb's words sank in, then crashed into the chair in front of his desk.

"I..."

Ferb reached over and put his hand on Phineas's shoulder. "I know. It's hard staying here and letting other people put their lives at risk. But it's necessary."

Phineas looked up at him, then handed Ferb the backpack. "Here. Have them take this. I can walk them through the repair from here. We don't need to bring anyone back across the border."

* * *

"Thank you, Director Blanchard. The resources of Doofenshmirtz Biosciences are at your disposal. Anything you can do to help my people..." Vanessa trailed off as she talked into the phone. She didn't want to think about the numbers she'd heard. The building had survived, and so had most of her people. The cruise missile had hit three floors below her office. They'd lost half of upper management, two top researchers, and several labs. Fortunately, nothing dangerous had escaped - containment labs were all down in protected areas underneath the building.

Even so, it was a devastating blow to the company. Most damaging was the loss of Preston, who had far too much of the day-to-day operations of the company in his head. They'd found his body just a few hours ago.

Vanessa's mother had called her in a panic, which had rapidly turned into complaints about how Vanessa needed to return to something safe like finance. Vanessa had begged off, saying she had to work on helping her people.

"Yes, of course," Director Blanchard said. "We have teams providing counseling, and repair teams are combing the wreckage. There may still be more survivors stuck under rubble. We have dogs trained to sniff out victims searching for them."

"Good. Thank you. I heard back from the production team for Obelisk. The batch they were working on was irreparably damaged by the power outage, so they're working on another one. That will set squad 3 back another week, but squad 2's implants made it out before the missile hit. They should arrive tomorrow, and we'll start on them as soon as squad 1 is out of the way."

"How is squad 1 coming along?"

"The third set of implants goes in tomorrow - we reordered, getting the ones that caused the most helplessness done first so they can train on them as they recover from the later rounds. We're doing their arms next, so they'll need help eating and cleaning themselves for a couple days. As soon as we're through that, we'll finish off with the neurological implants."

"And then training?"

"Several weeks at a minimum. I'm sorry..."

"I understand. It takes time to learn the necessary skills. Excellent job, Ms. Doofenshmirtz. Keep up the good work. Stay there, where it's safe, and we'll take care of your people here."

She hung up the phone, letting it hang loosely at her side.

* * *

Colin sat on the couch in the safehouse, a small apartment in an up-and-coming neighborhood northwest of the city. He flipped the TV between the dozen channels the government provided. Isabella had told him there had once been more, before the war, but these were all that were left.

 _Stupid sitcom. News. Stupid drama. Baseball game. Stupid game show. News. Stupid sitcom. Stupid sitcom. Stupid reality show. Baseball game. Stupid reality show. News. And back to the first stupid sitcom._

Frowning, he set it to a baseball game, just as background noise. The announcers were talking about how this was the first-ever game between the Albuquerque Hornets and the Chicago Cubs. Major League Baseball had merged the teams of the former Southwest Major Baseball League into the American and National Leagues, putting them back in their old leagues if possible.

Colin found himself struggling to care. Baseball had plummeted in popularity in Canada since the war started. Once Canada had dropped trade relations with three of the factions of the American war due to slavery, Canadians had lost interest in American sports like baseball and basketball. Colin had grown up playing football - soccer, as the Americans called it.

The safehouse door unlocked, and Colin turned toward it warily, his hand finding his DIMMER next to the couch.

Isabella came in, her eyes scanning everywhere, and she raised an eyebrow at him in query. She smelled faintly of sewage and similar unpleasantness. He nodded, confirming that it was clear.

She locked the door behind her and leaned against it dramatically. "Oof," she said. "Hey, is that the Hornets game?"

"Yeah, they're losing. How'd it go?"

She shrugged. "The data's going to Sanford Central. It's probably headquarters for the Council. Getting in there's going to be a cast-iron bitch. I don't think they noticed me tracking it." She sighed, and looked over at him. "You?"

"They aren't getting that broadcast center operational again soon, that's for damn sure."

"I figured. Good job. They put in a curfew - a couple cops picked me up for it and brought me," she made air quotes with her fingers, "home. They were really nice, actually."

"On the other hand, my arm implants are broken."

Isabella looked up, startled. "What?"

"If I activate my arm implants, they freeze in place. I spent too long clinging to the bottom of a truck, apparently."

"That sucks!"

"You're telling me. Phineas is working on a solution, apparently."

"Makes sense. Actually, that reminds me, I should check in." She pulled her earpiece out of a pocket and put it in her ear. "Stalker from Oscar One. The data feed is going to Scott Air Force Base outside St. Louis - probably Sanford Central." She paused a moment, nodding. "Yeah, really hard to get in there, I'm sure."

She laughed. "Yeah, just waltz in there, not a problem. Send more DIMMER ammo, I'm half out. Oscar One out." She pulled out the earpiece and looked at Colin. "They're sending somebody in with something for your arms. We get to hang out here for a day or so while we wait. They're figuring out what to do with us next. Stalker was joking that we should try to break into Sanford Central." She stretched and headed toward the bathroom. "I'm going to go get a shower. I really need one."

* * *

"I think we're dealing with multiple Dewdrop-class agents here," Archer said as he entered General Sumner's office first thing in the morning.

"Hm?" General Sumner said. "Take a seat and tell me why."

"Here," Archer said, putting a printout on the desk as he sat. It was a surveillance image of a young woman with blonde hair and pale skin.

General Sumner looked at it for a moment, then looked back up at Archer. "Who's that?"

"Two police officers saw this young woman walking along the street after curfew had been imposed last night. She told them she was out walking after a break-up and hadn't realized that curfew had been imposed."

"It happens, there's always a few like that."

"They drove her up to 17th Street and dropped her off. Nothing notable, right? Look closer."

General Sumner sat back, looking down at the picture. His eyes narrowed in recognition. "Is that...?"

Archer put a photo of Echo Three next to the sketch. "Remove the glasses. Darken the hair, darken the skin. It's Echo Three."

General Sumner nodded. "Yes. Yes, it is. So why do you think this means there's another Dewdrop agent?"

"We've got surveillance video of this woman at a hot dog stand near where she was picked up about five minutes after the bombs went off - no more than half an hour after the power to the fence went off. There's no way she could have gotten from the broadcast center to that hot dog stand in half an hour."

"If she flew in one of their hovercars?"

"Why would she be walking down the street, then?"

General Sumner pondered this for a moment. "Okay, let's look at it from the other side. Why do you think it was a Dewdrop-class agent who attacked the broadcast center?"

"Looking over the recordings from last night, we caught just a couple glimpses of the person. Not enough to see who they were, but checking how fast they were moving, it was Dewdrop speed. Either they've drafted world-class sprinters, or they've given somebody else implants."

General Sumner looked at the two pictures, then back at Archer. "I think you're on to something, Archer."

"I'll update the APB on Echo Three to include the makeup and hair bleaching."

"No," General Sumner said, holding up a hand. "Don't take it public. Notify high-security targets only. We don't want her to know we know what she's done."

Archer smiled. "Yes, Sir."

* * *

Adyson kept an eye out from the rooftops above Memorial Park. They'd realized that they couldn't afford to be outflanked again, so scouts had been positioned around the park to warn of incoming military forces.

Many of the protesters were ex-military, and they approached the protests with a ruthlessness that brought a smile to Adyson's face. She knew that the government wouldn't hesitate to send troops that would shoot first this time. She also knew that the protesters were capable of shooting back.

Adyson's phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced down at it - it was a message to the group of scouts.

 **A few spies just left the base.**

A photo followed, a view from behind of a group of 5 people. They looked like any other protesters, except that they were clearly in a group. They didn't fit together, though - they didn't look like a group that would normally be going to the protest together.

 **We'll baffle them with bullshit.**

Adyson smiled at the message from one of the leaders, down among the crowd.

"Freedom for all!" the chant came up from the crowd, and Adyson watched below her, agreeing silently.

* * *

"Okay. Take this to Stalker," Phineas said, handing the backpack to Major Corporal Duval. It had been decided that the delivery had to be handled by somebody who was already cleared for Obelisk. That left it to 11 Platoon, and as Duval was generally considered the best driver who wasn't already recovering from getting his Obelisk implants, he was the obvious choice to make the delivery.

"I will, Mr. Flynn," Duval said with a smile. He climbed into the tiny hovercar that Phineas had built. Phineas saluted him as he activated the stealth systems, and the hovercar vanished.

"Good luck," Phineas whispered.

* * *

Ferb kept an eye on the small track heading down toward Minneapolis. There had been a moment of tension as it passed through the brutal electromagnetic environment of the border, but Duval had taken the hovercar low and it had avoided detection so far.

The track provided was an estimate - they had no way of exactly communicating with the hovercar. Ferb was mostly watching for American reactions to it - the surest way to know they'd found it. So far, there had been nothing.

The hovercar should be nearing Minneapolis soon. Ferb glanced over at Phineas, curled up in the corner of the room, snoring. Phineas would want to be awoken as soon as the tools and repair materials were delivered.

* * *

Irving sat off to one side of the small parking lot. They'd chosen an abandoned department store east of St. Paul to make the drop-off. There was little traffic in the smallish town, which had been an up-and-coming suburb back before the war. With the population losses caused by eighteen years of fighting, many suburbs had become ghost towns as people moved into the cities for work, or away from the cities for safety. Fuel rationing and increased prices had made hour-long commutes infeasible for pretty much anyone.

Ideally, he wouldn't know the hovercar had arrived until the pilot - designated Peter Sixteen - landed and turned off the stealth systems.

Irving straddled his motorcycle patiently. He'd had to learn patience in this position. Rushing in had almost been fatal several times. He didn't intend to give Death another chance at him if he could help it. He'd have to wait until he got back to find out if his broadcast went out as expected.

He'd set up the Bailey video to run on every channel at 8pm, right as prime time started, when viewership was at its maximum. It would re-run continuously until the government managed to cut it off. He had a mental wager over how long that would take. A quick glance at his watch said it was 7:36.

Behind him, a small car sat quietly. If all went well, the two escaping slaves in it would hop on board the hovercar and ride back to Canada and freedom. He'd warned them that it would be dangerous - they'd said that it was better than staying here to be collared again. He couldn't really argue with that.

"Stalker, I'm getting some indications of increased air activity near you," Charlie One's voice said over the radio. "Do you see anything?"

Irving looked up into the dark night. The moon had just passed full, and its brightness made it hard to see anything else. "Nothing," he said, just as he saw some streaks of light moving above him. "Wait, I see something. Lights moving..."

A streak of fire, and then an explosion that blinded him briefly in the darkness. "Something just got hit," he said.

"Can you go to the crash site?" Charlie One said.

"I'll see what I can do." Irving turned to the car and said, "It doesn't look good - that looked like the hovercar getting shot down. Go back to the safe house, we'll get you out somehow." The driver nodded and drove off like a shot.

Irving kicked his motorcycle to life and drove off toward the tumbling lights. He leaned down low, racing through the quiet streets of the town.

As he got closer, he saw that the tumbling shape was, indeed, a hovercar, missing most of its back end. Whoever was piloting it was trying to control it, but without much success.

It crashed, less than a mile ahead of him, just off the road. He was on the scene in no more than thirty seconds.

He leapt off his bike, rushing over to the upside-down shattered remains of the hovercar. He saw one person in it - a young man in Canadian fatigues, still in his seat, held in by the safety harness. From the angle his neck hung at, it was clear the crash had been fatal.

Next to him, carefully strapped into its upside-down seat, was a backpack. Irving unbuckled it quickly and put it on.

He heard helicopters approaching as he climbed back on his motorcycle. He kicked it to life, racing back toward the city, back toward safety.

"Charlie One from Stalker," he said into his microphone. "Hostile intercept. Peter Sixteen is dead. Repeat, Peter Sixteen is dead. I have the package and am attempting evasion."

"Godspeed, Stalker," Charlie One said in his British accent.

Ahead, along the straight road, he saw police cars approaching, blue and red lights flashing. He turned off at the next intersection, keeping his eyes open for hiding places.

In the distance, he heard helicopters approaching over the sound of his revving engine. He turned off the motorcycle's lights, to make it harder for them to find him, navigating by the light of the full moon.

There was nobody ahead on his current road, as far as he could tell, so he opened up the throttle and tore off down the road. A quick glance down at the speedometer showed he was well north of 100 mph, flying across the countryside.

A light appeared ahead of him, several miles down the road, and the helicopters were getting louder. He turned off into a small copse of trees, shutting down the engine. He glanced up, seeing a helicopter flying along a mile or so south of him. A police car shot past, lights flashing as it went. He took a deep breath and relaxed a bit.

Another helicopter flew toward him, more slowly. He looked up at it warily from the trees. It would be upon him in no more than a minute, and it looked like a slave-catcher, with infrared imaging. He couldn't hide from it in this little cover.

He kicked the motorcycle back to life and took off, perpendicular to the helicopter's path, and raced south, back toward civilization, hoping to end-run around any blockades. Ahead of him, he saw a police car sitting across the road, its lights flashing. It was a couple miles away still, and probably couldn't see him. He slowed the bike and crept along, looking for hiding places.

Suddenly, the car pulled away, rushing away from him, back toward the city. _That's weird._ He looked up, and saw that the helicopters were hurrying in that direction as well. He pulled the cycle off the road again, dropping down into a culvert and peeking his head up.

Several police cars rushed past him, lights and sirens warning everyone in the area. He took a quick look at his watch, which read 8:10.

"Stalker from Charlie One," the voice came over the radio. "Your broadcast went out, and it's safe to say all Hell is breaking loose."

Irving grinned, and rode up and out of the culvert. He'd probably have to avoid the city, and instead head straight for Chicago with the supplies, but that was a small price to pay.

* * *

"You knew there was more to it," General Sumner said, stepping next to Archer as he sat in the planning room.

"I did, Sir. I hadn't expected them to have completely taken over the secondary center, but it makes sense. Destroy the primary so we have to fall back, and our security improvements are already out of date because they're in charge of the whole system."

"What do we do next? We don't have a tertiary."

"We have to drop the encryption requirements on the master transmitters and use the local site keys. Decentralize it."

"Christ. How do we keep them from taking over again, then?"

"Hopefully, there are too many local centers for them to all be taken over at once."

"Did we get that fucking video stopped?"

"We took everything offline when it started up the third time. Rebooted the whole damn thing - which took half an hour."

"And that did it?"

Archer laughed bitterly. "No, Sir. The bastards had control of the restore system. It came up showing fucking Bailey again."

"When we catch that son of a bitch, he's a dead man."

"Sir, the protesters outnumber the Army now, and I wouldn't count on the Army backing us over them. If we aren't careful, then when he catches _us_ , _we're_ dead men."

* * *

Isabella peeked out the window. Crowds of people were milling about in the streets. A few arguments were taking place, along with a couple fistfights.

"This is gonna be a fucking mess, eh?" Colin said over her shoulder.

"Yep. Looks pretty obvious at this point that most people believe the worst of the government. Look over there." She gestured down the street, then stepped out of the way.

He glanced out at the police presence at the end of the street, then shook his head, giving her a puzzled look.

"The police aren't trying to crack down on this at all. They're watching because they have to be here, but they're not going to stop this."

"The government is going to overreact to this, aren't they?"

"Yep."


	7. Repair

Adyson slipped back, behind the staircase to the roof, as she heard boots tromping up the stairs. She crouched, trying to be small, trying to be unnoticed.

The door opened, and then swung shut as footsteps slowly walked over to the edge of the roof. Adyson sent a quick message to the group chat - **One on building 8.** She saw that several of the scouts on other buildings were reporting similar.

 **Wait a few before doing anything.** Adyson nodded - the people planning this didn't want the soldiers to get an early warning.

 **Soldiers starting to move toward the park. Take the snipers.**

Adyson pulled her taser out from inside her jacket, checking it automatically. As quietly as she could, she stood up, looking at the sniper's expected position. She could see the sniper, just as a form - the body armor and baggy camo made it impossible to tell anything about the sniper from behind. They were holding their rifle up, not sighting it, as they watched the protests below.

Adyson crept forward, as silently as her artificial leg would let her. The sniper wasn't focusing on her, though.

The sniper put their hand to their ear, and suddenly started to swivel. Adyson brought the taser up, and she saw the sniper's eyes go wide through their goggles as they saw her. Their mouth started to open as she pulled the trigger. The dart flew true, into their leg - Adyson had aimed low to avoid possible body armor around the torso. They twitched uncontrollably, dropping their rifle as they fell to the roof. Adyson rolled them over and handcuffed them to a nearby pipe before pulling out her phone and sending, **Building 8 clear.**

Similar reports came from the other buildings as Adyson picked up the sniper rifle. It was palm-locked, as expected. She opened the service port under the handgrip and inserted the reprogrammer she'd been given. The light by the safety flashed green and yellow. She placed her hand on the grip, and the light flashed green for a moment before turning solid green. **Armed** , she sent, then removed the reprogrammer and put it in her pocket.

 **Get ready, they're coming.**

To one side, the sniper began squirming, trying to get out of the handcuffs. "This won't work," they said in a rough voice.

"It already has," Adyson said quietly. She looked over the edge of the roof, down at the park. The crowd filled the park, spilling out into nearby streets. Last night's video broadcast had made many realize just how badly they had been suckered, and the government's ham-fisted attempt to stop the message had failed so badly that they'd had to take TV broadcasts down entirely.

"You won't be able to use the rifle," the sniper said.

"We have reprogrammers," she said, sighting in the direction the military was expected from.

"They'll collar you for this."

"They might collar you for failure at the rate they're going. Are you sure you're on the right side?"

The sniper shut up.

Adyson leaned on the rifle and shook her head at the absurdity. She, a former Army truck driver, medically discharged after losing a leg, was supposed to act as a sniper. She wasn't really a bad shot, but she'd been chosen for this job mostly because she was trustworthy and calm, rather than her ability with a sniper rifle.

The crowd on the far side of the park started crowding back, and she saw a block of troops marching in, rifles leveled. The crowd was chanting something at them, but she couldn't quite make out what it was. They unfurled banners, which she knew should say things like, "Are you the next slave?" and "Don't fight for slavers".

The soldiers looked terrified - it was obvious even from up here. They were caught between two horrible choices - shooting civilians in cold blood, or being arrested for insubordination. The argument could even be made that it would be treason for them to side with the protesters, and they could be collared for it.

From the middle of the soldiers, an officer stepped up, holding a bullhorn. He was tall and thin, with straight blond hair and an elongated nose. "Citizens, disperse! That is an order!" he said in an upper-class New England accent.

Some of the fringes of the protesters faded back, but the core holding the park seemed to shout louder.

"You are surrounded by crack Army forces!" the officer shouted. "Disperse now! If you remain, I cannot guarantee your safety, or even your survival!"

Adyson's phone buzzed, and she glanced down at the message. **7, take him out.**

A shot cracked through the air from the building to Adyson's right, and the officer grasped his chest in surprise. Blood seeped through his fingers as he fell over, behind the soldiers.

Panic spread through the soldiers, and they pointed their rifles at the protesters more as shield than weapon. The back edge of the soldiers started slipping back toward the Danville Army Base, as sergeants and low-level officers tried to rally them.

A frantic sergeant just behind the front line shouted something, and the soldiers in front of her leveled their rifles and fired. Adyson sighted in on the sergeant, but another sniper took her down before Adyson could fire. Quickly, Adyson shifted down the line. Another sergeant was trying to do the same, it appeared, so Adyson pulled the trigger. He went down, and the troops in front of him dove to the ground.

The soldiers who had fired were being swarmed by protesters, and the troops behind them were a chaotic mess. Some were trying to lift their rifles, some were dropping them and fleeing, others were just cowering.

Adyson swept the area, seeing no threats. What soldiers were left were being relieved of their weapons, or were taking them up and facing the direction they'd come, as if daring their fleeing comrades to return. A cheer was going up around the crowd, although Adyson could see space being cleared as first aid was attempted on those who had been shot.

Adyson sat back, hard. The sniper was watching her with wide eyes. "Shit just went down, didn't it?" they asked quietly.

"Yep." The image of the soldier she'd shot sat in front of her eyes. It didn't seem to want to leave.

* * *

Irving parked his motorcycle off the street, then boldly strode into the small apartment building. _The key is to look like you belong here_ , he thought. He climbed up to the second floor and knocked on the door to the safe house.

A shadow passed over the peephole in the door, and then the door opened. Oscar Two beckoned him in. He entered quickly, and the door closed behind him.

"I heard about Master Corporal Duval," Oscar Two said quietly. "Let's hope he didn't die in vain."

"Master...oh, Peter Sixteen? They never gave me a real name," Irving said. "Anyway, here's the bag." He took the backpack off and handed it to Oscar Two.

"Great," Oscar Two said. "Why don't you have a seat, and we'll see what we have here?"

"Where's Oscar One?" Irving asked, looking around as he sat.

"Taking a nap," Oscar Two said, nodding toward the bedroom. "Long night last night."

"Well, okay." Irving pulled open the backpack. "So Charlie Two said he'd walk me through this."

Oscar Two sat next to him. Irving suppressed an internal cheer - it didn't mean anything. He had to sit there to get the repair completed. But...

Irving smiled. At least he'd have a nice view while he did the work.

Shaking his head, he activated his earpiece. "Charlie Two from Stalker, I'm here and ready to perform updates."

"This is Charlie One, give me just a moment to get Charlie Two online."

"Understood." Irving sat, vaguely smiling at Oscar Two.

The long moment stretched out. Irving found himself looking at Oscar Two's lips, of all things. He had to tear his eyes away, and instead found himself staring into the backpack.

"Charlie Two here," a cheerful voice said on the radio, startling Irving.

"Okay. What do you want me to do?" Irving asked.

"There's a small scanner in there. Plug it into your earpiece's data port, and then have Oscar Two turn on his implants."

Irving pulled a small cord out of the scanner and connected it to his earpiece. "Okay, connected." He looked at Oscar Two. "Oscar Two, turn on your implants."

"Call me Colin," Oscar Two said, then smiled. "They're on." He twitched his torso, but his arms seemed frozen stiff.

"Getting readings," Charlie Two said. "Oh! Oh, that makes sense."

"You have a fix?" Irving asked.

"Not yet. Going to take twenty minutes or so. I'll call you back when it's ready. Charlie Two out."

Irving shrugged and looked at Oscar...at Colin. "He says twenty minutes."

Colin frowned. "Did he say I could turn these off?"

"He didn't say, no."

Colin sighed deeply. "If he wants them back on, he can call me back and tell me." As suddenly as they'd frozen, his arms started moving again, and he stretched them out. Irving surreptitiously watched his chest ripple under his snug shirt. Definitely not a bad view.

Colin sat back, smiling. "So how'd you end up in this line of work, Stalker?"

"Oh, I'm Irving. I grew up near Charlie One and Two - Phineas and Ferb - in Danville. I was such a big fan of theirs!"

"What did they do?"

"One year they decided that they wanted to do a different cool thing every day of the summer. So they had something to say on the first day of school when their teacher asked what they'd done all summer, you see. And I was just entranced. So I...well, I stalked them. A bit. Okay, a lot. I got really good at secret video recordings and cracking into computers so I could see what they were doing. That's where the codename came from."

Colin was frowning a bit.

"And then I grew up a bit, and realized that I'd been...well, more than a little creepy," Irving said hurriedly, trying to keep Colin from thinking the worst of him. More than he already did. "So I stopped stalking them. They both got girlfriends around then, anyway." Irving grimaced. He'd hoped _so_ much that one of them might be gay. Or bi. Just possibly might be interested in little old Irving. Although he had heard that Ferb had dated guys occasionally...

He shook his head, returning to the present. "Anyway, that was a couple years after the slavery laws went through, and I realized how absolutely horrible slavery was. So I decided to take my stalking talents and use them for good. I worked alone for a while, tracking down private information on pro-slavery politicians and trying to use it to blackmail them."

Colin nodded. "Do what you can to help, eh?"

"Pretty much. After a few years of that, one of my operations ran into an effort by the Anti-Slavery Front. We worked in parallel for a bit before they offered to give me more resources if I helped them out. I kinda dropped off the face of the earth then - officially, I don't actually exist as far as the government is concerned." Irving tried to force himself to slow down. He was talking too fast again, making it too hard to follow him. He was like a firehose of stories sometimes, and people hated that.

Colin raised an eyebrow. "So is that more handy, or trouble?"

Irving smiled, surprised at how quickly Colin had caught that it could be a mixed blessing. "A bit of both. Probably more useful than not right now, but at the time, I just did it so I didn't get drafted."

Colin laughed. "Yeah, I can understand that. Hard to fight to free the slaves when you're one of the people out capturing them."

"Yessiree. How about yourself? How did you end up as the first Canadian super-soldier, Colin?"

* * *

Colin pondered Irving's question. Originally, Irving hadn't seemed at all like Colin's type, but after learning more about him, Colin realized there was a deep, solid core to the man that Colin found rather appealing. And if Colin was reading his signals correctly, he was gayer than a moose on helium.

"I grew up in a rough part of Vancouver. The sort of place where you need to fight your way up. So I did. There were always threats that the Americans would jump the border and take Vancouver, and I wanted to protect my family, so I joined up. It was a way out - maybe the only one, really."

Irving was rapt. Colin had to suppress a laugh - he really was fascinating in his own way.

"Anyway, it turned out I was pretty good at being a soldier. I signed up for a slot in the Special Operations Regiment, and they took me. I made it up to second-in-command of a platoon, the chief NCO."

"And then?" Irving asked.

"And then Phineas and Isabella showed up, and we got tasked to protect them. Ferb and Doc Tjinder came along the next day."

"How'd she get involved in this mess? She didn't say."

"She was part of the Southwest research project that created the implants, called Dewdrop. Last survivor due to attrition and a lucky bomb hit on headquarters."

"Ohhh," Irving said. "That makes sense. And Doc Tjinder?"

"Brilliant scientist. Youngest Ph.D in Canadian history. He and Phineas did the primary work reverse-engineering the implants and then making newer, better ones. A bit of an arrogant ass sometimes, but he's good enough that you cope. He actually apologized to me once."

"What for?"

"Oh, the first set of lung implants didn't work and I almost lost function in one lung permanently."

Irving winced. "They fixed that, right?"

"Yeah, they updated the implants and replaced them. Anyway, once they thought they had working implants, they wanted a volunteer to test them out. And...I figured it might as well be me. This is actually my first mission with them."

"Huh." Irving sat back, and Colin took the opportunity to look him over. He was lean but not stringy, with a hint of athleticism. Not, all told, an unpleasant sight.

"So what do you do other than hack government computers and deliver repair parts to stray supersoldiers?" Colin asked. "Got someone waiting for you back home?"

"Nah, my home pretty much was the computer room for the past couple years, except when I had to go out and plant listening devices or physically get into a detached network."

"Looks like it kept you in shape. I bet you have to chase the girls off with a stick," Colin probed.

"I suppose, although I've never really been that interested in girls," Irving said, before suddenly realizing what he had just said and clamping his mouth shut.

Colin grinned. "Not a problem. I understand. Neither have I."

Irving paused, his eyes growing wide.

"Stalker and Oscar Two from Charlie Two, I'm ready at this end," Phineas's voice said over the radio.

 _Your timing sucks, Phineas._

"Stalker here," Irving said, touching his earpiece.

"Oscar Two here," Colin added into his own.

"Okay. Oscar Two, get in a comfortable position and turn your implants on," Phineas said.

Colin sat back, crossing his arms across his chest before activating the arm implants. A brief tendril of fear arose as his arms froze in position again. He really hated that feeling.

"Done," Colin said.

"Stalker, is the scanner...oh, it's running. Excellent. There's a reprogrammer and three syringes in the backpack. Put one syringe in the reprogrammer, then connect it to the earpiece."

"I'd have to disconnect the scanner for that," Irving said.

"Oh, right," Phineas said. "Oscar Two, can you connect it to yours?"

"Not with my arms out of commission."

"Oh, go ahead and turn off the implants, I've got what I need."

"Okay," Colin said, stretching his arms out again. "Which one's the reprogrammer?"

"Here you go," Irving said, handing him a brick-sized white box with a smoked panel over a small rectangular compartment. Multicolored lights on the other half of the face were mostly off. Colin took it and popped a panel open on the bottom, revealing a data connector. He pulled the cable out and plugged it into his earpiece, fumbling only a bit to find the port that he couldn't see.

"It's in," Colin said.

"Got it. Okay, put a syringe in?" Phineas said.

"Sorry," Irving said, pulling a syringe out of the backpack and handing it to Colin. Colin took it and flipped the smoked panel aside and put the syringe in, closing the panel to cover it.

"There it is. Okay, programming the nanobots," Phineas said.

Colin heard a slight whine through his earpiece, and winced. "There you go," Phineas said. "Okay, Stalker, get out an alcohol wipe and find a spot on Oscar Two's arm. We want to put the shot right into the meaty part of his biceps."

Colin tried to roll up his sleeves, but they were too long, so he unplugged the programmer from his earpiece, then took the shirt off entirely. He thought he saw Irving's eyes light up a bit, and smirked.

"Right about there," Colin said, pointing to a spot on his left arm.

"Okay. Once you've swabbed it, go ahead and inject the syringe in there. Oscar Two, your arms should be out of commission for about two minutes while they get reprogrammed."

"And if something goes wrong?" Colin asked.

"That's why there's a spare syringe."

"There's two spares," Irving said, puzzled.

"One for Oscar One, once we confirm this works."

"Ohh," Irving said.

"Okay, let's do this," Colin said.

Irving wiped his arm with the alcohol swab, then pulled the sheath off the syringe. "Okay, here goes nothing," he said, injecting the nanobots into Colin's arm. Colin's implants neutralized the pain, so he could just watch as the injection took effect.

His arms felt like they were fading until they were numb and lifeless, useless blobs of protein hanging from his shoulders. He could still see them, but they felt disconnected. "Two minutes, you said?"

"Another ninety seconds," Phineas answered.

"So what did you just do?" Colin asked, to keep his attention from the lack of sensation in his arms.

"Just reprogramming. The implants weren't broken, but they'd gotten themselves stuck in a loop. A reboot would have fixed them for now, but the updated code will keep it from happening again."

"I turned them off, that didn't reboot them?"

"No, a full reboot. The difference between turning off your TV with the remote control and turning it off by pulling the electrical cord out of the wall."

"Ah."

"Thirty seconds," Phineas said. Colin could feel a pins-and-needles sensation all down his arms, and he couldn't seem to suppress it.

"This is really uncomfortable," Colin said.

"Sorry. Hopefully we won't have to do anything like this again."

"Agreed."

The pins-and-needles sensation went away, and Colin found that he could move his arms again. He flicked the knot in his muscles that activated his arm implants, and they came to life. He dropped down to the floor and did a one-armed pushup trivially, as if he weighed nothing. "Seems like it's working," Colin said.

Irving seemed to be breathing heavily.

"Scanner agrees," Phineas said, obliviously. "Put another syringe in the reprogrammer and we'll get set for Oscar One."

Colin pulled his shirt on, then plugged the reprogrammer into his earpiece as Irving put the second syringe in. Colin tapped his earpiece, switching over to the channel he shared with Isabella. "Hey, when you're ready, the arm upgrades are here."

"Be out in a minute," Isabella said.

He tapped the earpiece again until he'd returned to the group channel with Irving and Phineas. "She's on her way." The slight whine returned as Phineas sent the data to the reprogrammer.

Colin pulled out another alcohol swab and unplugged the reprogrammer from his earpiece. Isabella came in, chewing on a protein bar. "Your arms are fixed?"

"Yeah, good as new," Colin said. "Your turn."

She sighed as she took a seat in the chair next to the couch. "Okay, what do I have to do?"

"Roll up your sleeve," Irving said. He took the syringe while Colin opened the alcohol swab and wiped it across her bicep. "Ready?"

"So what will this do?" Isabella asked warily.

"It'll take your arms offline for about two minutes to upgrade and reboot them," Colin said.

"Ew. Go ahead," she said.

"Here goes," Irving said, injecting the syringe into her arm.

"Oh, yeah, that's weird," Isabella said. "You forget how things feel without the implants in place."

Colin laughed as he sheathed the syringe and set it next to the programmer.

The door burst open, and a soldier came in with a DIMMER rifle. He aimed and fired at Irving, who squawked as he fell to the ground unconscious. A second soldier, right behind, aimed at Colin, but his implants were coming up to speed and he was already moving, spinning aside as the rifle slowly came up. The shot went wide as he leapt forward with a snap-kick that threw the soldier back out the door, into the third soldier who was just coming in.

Isabella was standing up, cursing her useless arms as she turned toward the window, which was smashed to shards as a soldier swung through it boots-first. She ran over and drop-kicked the soldier in the crotch as he landed, flinging him screaming back out the window.

The first soldier was turning toward Colin as he slapped the rifle away, and his second shot hit the wall. Colin reached over and grabbed him, pulling him into the doorway just in time for one of the soldiers in the hallway to fire, hitting the lead trooper. Colin saw his eyes go wide inside his goggles before he slumped down, unconscious. Colin grabbed his rifle away as he fell.

Isabella was crouching by the window, and Colin took up a position next to the door. He leaned out, quickly, and saw that the two soldiers out there were starting to get up. He raised the rifle and fired two quick shots.

Nothing came out. A red light near the handgrip blinked forlornly.

 _Fuck. Palmprint scanners._

He didn't hear anyone else coming, and the soldiers were raising their own weapons. He leapt out into the hall, swinging the DIMMER rifle like a club. The soldiers' weapons were knocked away, and he quickly pummeled them down. He hoped they'd survive, but right now, it was more important that they not be conscious.

The neighbor across the hall peeked out, and her eyes opened wide. She ducked back into her apartment, and he heard the deadbolt click and the security chain scrape.

He ran back into the apartment and dropped the useless rifle. His DIMMER pistol was by the couch; he picked it up and checked it quickly.

"Put the backpack on me," Isabella said. "Then let's try to get out of here."

"How?" Colin tossed things into the backpack and lifted Isabella's arms to put it on her shoulders.

Sirens were approaching, the sound getting louder through the broken window. Colin could hear footsteps rushing up the stairs.

"To the roof," she said. "We can go across and try to find a way down behind their cordon."

"Sounds good," he said.

"Ah!" Isabella said, wiggling her arms. "Much better." She pulled the backpack off and took her DIMMER pistol out. "Can you carry Stalker?"

"Got him," Colin said, stuffing his DIMMER in the back of his pants, then kneeling down to pick up the unconscious man.

* * *

As Isabella led Colin toward the rear stairwell, she heard another squad of soldiers coming up the front one. They started up the stairwell quietly as the soldiers spread out in the apartment they'd just left.

Her stomach growled, and she cursed herself for not thinking to fill the backpack with food before they left. But, then, if she had, they might not have gotten out before the soldiers arrived.

They reached the roof, and she cracked the door open slightly to peer out. She didn't see anything, so she burst through, DIMMER at the ready. The roof was empty, as far as she could tell.

"Clear," she said, then touched her earpiece. "Charlie One from Oscar One. Raid on the safehouse. We're bugging out. Won't be in range of a signal booster for a while. We'll be in touch when we can."

"Affirmative, Oscar One," Ferb said. "Be safe."

Isabella laughed bitterly. "Yeah, right. Oscar One out."

Colin was carrying the unconscious Stalker in a bridal carry. It looked kind of sweet, actually. "Which way do we get out of here?" he asked.

"Let's go along the rooftops and see where they're deployed."

She peered out over the edge of the roof. The block had been cordoned off by soldiers, she noticed, and there was a second line of them on the far side of the streets at either end. The crowds from last night's protest had been dispersed, and apparently had chosen to go elsewhere for the night.

"Let's go a few roofs down," she said, "in case they come up here looking for us."

The next building was a story taller than their apartment building, so she leapt up to catch the edge of its roof and pulled herself up. "Toss him up," she said to Colin.

He chuckled softly. "Can you toss down a rope?"

"That makes more sense, I suppose," she said as she pulled off the backpack and rooted around for one. "Don't have one."

He shook his head, then froze. "They're on their way up. Help me up?"

She nodded as he slung Stalker over a shoulder, then took a few steps run-up before leaping up. She braced herself against the edge of the roof, leaning down to catch his upstretched hand. Quickly, she hauled the two men onto the taller roof and they ducked down below the edge.

"I don't see them up here," a female soldier said on the roof they'd just left.

"Well, look around," a male soldier said.

Isabella nodded her head toward the far side of the roof, and Colin picked up Stalker again as they quietly walked away from the roof they'd left.

The perspective was a little better from up here. There were two more buildings before the end of the block, and she could see that the cordons were being replaced by police while the soldiers moved in to search the buildings.

"We need to get away from this block entirely," she said.

"How?"

"Thinking."

She looked around, seeing if there was any way across the wide gaps above the streets. Even the narrow street in front of the building was a good twenty feet across including the sidewalks, and the wider avenue at the end of the block would be several times that.

"We might be able to jump it," Colin said, following her gaze to the streets. "But not carrying Stalker, and we can't leave him."

"I know," she said. She trotted to the back of the building and looked down at the back yard. She saw a few soldiers patrolling through it, watching the back doors, and she frowned.

"We need a distraction," she said. "Something to draw these people away."

"What's in the backpack?"

Isabella looked inside - one more syringe, the reprogrammer, some spare DIMMER clips, the scanner, and... "Oh," she said, "there's another metal-eater rifle in here. Three shots."

Colin thought for a moment, then peeked out over the street. "Gonna suck for the people here if we do this, but if we can take out the block's transformer..."

"That'd be a nice distraction, and make us harder to spot."

"That's what I was thinking. Can you make the shot?"

She rolled her eyes and assembled the rifle, putting her DIMMER into the bag. In the distance, she could hear the sound of a helicopter approaching. Carefully, so as not to present an obvious silhouette, she sighted in on the metal box on a nearby corner. She gently squeezed the trigger, and it made a soft _*ftang*_ sound. A red dot on the transformer quickly spread, and then the transformer blew up with a loud explosion. The afterimage filled her vision as the whole area went dark.

Below, shouting filled the streets, and she heard people asking what had happened. The afterimage was clearing, and she could see that the main street was lit by the headlights of a police car on the corner.

She heard footsteps on the stairs up to the roof, and slipped over by the door, setting down the rifle and pulling her DIMMER from the backpack. Colin followed, still carrying Stalker.

The door crashed open, and a flashlight swept the far side of the roof. "I don't see nothin'," a voice said, and she heard a footstep onto the roof.

She listened carefully - sounded like two of them. Her implants were already up to full speed.

"Sweep behind the staircase," another voice said, and she saw the flashlight coming around the corner. She leapt out, her DIMMER firing as she moved. The first soldier never had a chance to react before the knockout shot took effect. They slumped down against the door jamb, unconscious.

The second soldier was just starting to turn when Isabella's second shot hit them in the back of the leg. Their motion turned into a face-down flop onto the roof.

She waited silently, trying to hear if there were more. The helicopter was getting louder, making it hard to tell, but she didn't think she heard anything from the stairwell.

"Clear," she whispered.

"Down?" Colin asked, still carrying Stalker.

"I think so. There should be some dark areas in the street we can use to get out of this block."

A beam of light pierced the dark night, shining across the far corner of the block. The helicopter was sweeping its light across the rooftops.

"Shit," Isabella said, dropping her DIMMER and grabbing at the rifle again. "Hope this thing works on aircraft aluminum," she said, sighting in on the chopper.

Another _*ftang*_ , and the red dot appeared, on the side of the helicopter, growing slower than usual. On such a small vehicle, though, it hardly seemed to matter. The pilot must have noticed, as the helicopter suddenly turned and started to fly away, but it was too late.

The tail rotor went first, flying off to crash into a nearby building as the metal holding it on was eaten away. The rest of the helicopter, uncontrollable even if the metal eater hadn't started on the engine mount, spun its way to the ground, landing on top of the police cars at one intersection. The crash reverberated through the dark streets, followed by a loud detonation as the heat from the metal eater set off the gas tank.

"Shit," Isabella whispered, wondering how many people had been caught in that. She hadn't thought it through what would happen, she just reacted.

"We...we should get going," Colin said, his voice a little shaky.

She nodded, disassembling the rifle and putting it into the backpack, along with her dropped DIMMER. "They'll be busy over there, we should be able to get out now."


	8. Convergence

Archer was resting in the main command room when his screen pinged. Sighing, he pressed his palm to the reader next to it, and a message came up. He looked it over, read it again to confirm it said what he thought it had said, and muttered, "Dammit!" a bit louder than he really had intended to.

"What's wrong, Archer?" General Sumner said, looking up from the main map.

"Sorry, Sir. The attempt to capture Echo Three and her companions failed. Casualty report still coming in but at least twenty police and soldiers dead, plus half a dozen civilians."

General Sumner stood and walked over. "We almost caught Echo Three? How?"

"The hovercar that got shot down - we figured out that the package it was delivering got picked up by an ASF hacker hotshot called 'Stalker'. We have no idea what his real name is, but a patrol found the motorcycle he'd used in the past sitting in an alleyway. Analysis dug through records for nearby apartments, and found one that looked likely to be their safe house. We sent in a squad just in case, with a few more nearby for backup, and a police cordon around on the off chance we had a hit."

"Sounds reasonable. What happened?"

"The squad got their asses kicked, and the three of them got away. The metal-melter thing they used on the rails in Grand Forks? Turns out it does a dandy number on electrical transformers, and an even better one on police helicopters."

General Sumner winced. "I can imagine."

"On the plus side, I have a description of the other enhanced soldier now. Tall, broad-shouldered East Asian man. We've got a sketch artist working on it, and they're combing surveillance videos to see if we can get some likely suspects."

"Are we sure they got away?"

"Well, can't be certain, but it's not like they'd stick around. We haven't found them yet."

General Sumner reached over and clapped Archer on the shoulder. "Good job getting even that close to them. We'll get them eventually."

"Yes, we will, Sir," Archer said.

* * *

Colin drove along down the side road toward St. Louis. "Why are we doing this again?"

"We need to try to get the keys to that feed from the New White House. They're pumping vast quantities of data along constantly, and there must be decryption keys somewhere," Irving said from the back seat. He'd woken up after an hour or so, only somewhat the worse for wear, and directed them to a barn in the countryside that held an ASF equipment cache. They'd gotten a better car from there, along with updated ID cards and - most importantly from Colin and Isabella's perspectives - breakfast.

"Breaking in to one of the most secure facilities in the world, though...I thought you were joking."

"It makes sense," Isabella said. "And it's certainly the last place they'd look for us."

"Yeah, I get it," Colin said. "So how do we get into Sanford Central?"

"Let's see what gets in and out of there," Isabella said. "Then we can figure out how to sneak in."

"Fake slave collars might work," Irving said. "If they mainly want slaves in there, we could pretend to be slaves."

"No, they restrict which slaves are allowed in there too," Isabella said. "If you're a slave in there, you're never allowed to leave, and from what Holly said, they sneak you in as well."

"Could we have one of us sneak the other two in as slaves being delivered?" Colin asked.

"That might work," Isabella said. "I can't say I'm thrilled at the idea, but it just might work."

* * *

"They're hunkered down in the base," Catalina said. Adyson nodded. She'd been added to this outer circle of leadership after the last attack. The inner leaders, like Louise and Catalina, were the ones making the final decisions, but they were trying to widen the circle to make more people feel invested in the protests.

"Well, as long as they're on the base, they're not bothering us," Timothy said. A tall, lanky, pale-skinned man with bright red hair, he was another member of the inner leadership, largely responsible for counter-intelligence work.

"For the moment," Louise added darkly.

"I'll take what I can get," Timothy said.

"Soldiers!" a runner gasped, hurrying into the room. "Soldiers coming from the base."

"Shit!" Catalina said, rushing out, followed by everyone else. "Get people on the rooftops!"

"They're there. No attempts to position snipers that we've seen so far."

"Then what the hell?"

They reached the park, still full of people. The protests had been running around the clock now, exacerbated by the government's inability to get the television networks running again. The soldiers hadn't tried to remove them again since the firefight last night, but now, as it was getting dark, they were coming again.

Adyson heard a rhythmic sound from the direction of the base, and paused, listening. "They're chanting?"

Louise paused. "Yeah. What?"

Adyson tried to focus on the sounds, and then they turned the corner, and it became clearer. The chant was "Freedom for all!" and the soldiers were carrying signs of support.

Adyson's jaw dropped. "That, I was not expecting."

"Nor me. Think it's real?"

Catalina looked the crowd over. "I don't see any officers. Get people talking to them, find out if they're real or full of shit. Which ones are real, rather. There's sure to be some spies in there."

Louise shrugged. "So what? There's spies here, too."

"Not so many, actually," Timothy said with a vicious smile. "They get found out and dealt with."

The soldiers were reaching the park, and the protesters were making room for them. A great shout went out.

"Hopefully, wherever the rat bastard is hiding, the fucking mayor hears that," Adyson said.

* * *

"Ferb, you need some sleep," Vanessa said, pulling his chair back from the console.

Ferb nodded, standing up. He walked over to the corporal who was keeping an ear on things as backup, and said, "If we hear from either Oscar unit or from Stalker, let me know."

"Sure thing, Mr. Fletcher," the corporal said without looking up from the maps.

Vanessa took his hand and led him outside, where a soldier drove them back to the mobile home they shared. Erik waved as they entered. He'd taken up residence in the spare bedroom after being rescued, although he spent a lot of time talking to Ottawa. "How's it going?" he asked.

"Okay at my end. Apparently things are starting to fall apart stateside."

"That's what it looked like to me," Ferb said.

"No," Vanessa said. "You are not going to talk shop now."

"Just for a moment," Ferb said. "Any word on declarations of war?"

"We think there's a firm commitment for Mexico to join us if we declare war first. Europe's still being iffy. We really need the Americans to declare war, to clarify things for everyone."

Ferb rolled his eyes and let Vanessa pull him into the bedroom.

* * *

"General Sumner," Archer said. "We have a problem."

"Just one?" General Sumner asked. "We're doing well if we're down to one."

Archer laughed. "Granted. But one that's bigger than the rest."

"Okay. What is it?"

"The Danville Army Base has mutinied."

"Mutinied as in..."

"The soldiers have gone out and joined the protesters."

General Sumner leaned his elbows on his desk and rubbed his eyes with both hands. "I don't need this shit," he said. "All of them?"

"Most. They're demanding that Dutch step down, that Phil step down, that a full investigation of the Shatter Day bombings occur, and that the Thirteenth be amended to remove slavery as a criminal sentence."

"We can't let it stand," General Sumner said.

"I'm aware, yes. But sending in more troops is likely to strengthen them right now, to be honest."

"Go get me a messenger. Lieutenant Dillinger, if he's around."

* * *

"Somebody up there must like seeing me in these things," Isabella said, holding up the collar.

Colin laughed. "Hopefully, once this is all done, nobody ever has to wear one again. Unless you want to wear one for Phineas. Recreationally."

She glared at him levelly. "So totally not my thing, Colin. And I don't really need to know if it's yours."

It really wasn't her thing. Mostly. Sometimes the idea of Phineas being in charge like that was hot. But it really didn't seem like him, so she didn't pursue the idea.

"You do realize how long I've been fighting to keep people from having to wear these?" Stalker asked. He'd put his on already.

"Yep. And wearing one now can help us get rid of them once and for all," Colin said.

"Fine," Isabella said. She grabbed the tunic and stomped off to the bathroom to change.

She took a moment to look at herself in the mirror. She was beginning to recognize herself with the lighter hair and skin, but she was really looking forward to letting her hair grow back out.

 _So. A collar again._

She wished she could get in contact with Phineas, but this safe house didn't have a repeater. He was probably worried about her.

Of course, telling him their plans would only worry him even more. He'd told her that they should work on getting copies of those keys, but...

She locked the collar around her neck. It was rigged so that it would pretend to respond to control remotes, but instead of delivering agonizing pain, it would only deliver a small vibration that she could react to. Not that an actual collar would cut through her implants' pain-blocking ability, but the fake collar was also trivially removable whenever she wanted.

With a sigh, she stripped down, then disassembled her palmtop. Some quick work with flesh-colored adhesive and the pieces of it were stuck to her chest, hiding underneath her breasts. Two of Phineas's magic ID cards were tucked in with it, just in case. She pulled the tunic on over bare skin and adhesive, confirming that the palmtop didn't show. She'd really love a pair of underwear to finish the outfit, but they might actually check for that, and that would get awkward. She had to hope the palmtop could survive unnoticed until she could hide it elsewhere.

She bundled up her clothes and came out of the bathroom, pausing at what she saw. Colin and Stalker were just kind of staring at each other. Stalker had changed into the snug shorts that were auction clothes for male slaves. He wasn't bad looking - a bit on the short side, a bit of curly orange hair on his skinny chest. He seemed to have caught Colin's attention.

"We ready?" she asked after they didn't move for a moment.

"Huh? Yeah," Colin said, embarrassed.

"Then let's go."

* * *

"Messenger for you from Chicago, Colonel," the adjutant said.

"Send them in," Colonel Gilbert said, not looking up from his paperwork.

After a moment, he looked up. A young man with first lieutenant's bars stood on the other side of the desk, waiting.

"What does Chicago have to say that they felt the need to send someone in person?" the colonel asked.

"General Sumner has a special launch order for you," the lieutenant said.

"Okay. Are we worried that our communications are compromised? Why send a messenger instead of transmitting an order like usual?"

"It's a special launch. Tumbler warhead."

"The Canadian shields are too good, I can't guarantee it'll get through."

"You aren't firing at Canada," the lieutenant said. "Your target is Danville, in the Tri-State Area."

Colonel Gilbert looked up at the lieutenant sharply. The young man was cool and collected, and clearly had no qualms with ordering a tumbler bomb strike on an American city.

"There are Canadians there?" Colonel Gilbert asked delicately.

"There are traitors there."

"The entire city?"

"The army base there has gone rogue. Most of the soldiers have joined the protesters. We need to make an example of them."

Colonel Gilbert gave the lieutenant a very thin smile. "Very well. Have General Sumner send me an order to fire on Danville, and I will make it happen."

"He has. Through me."

"No. You do not get to give me orders, Lieutenant. And I will be damned if I'm going to fire on American civilians in an American city without a very, very precise order from above telling me to do it."

The lieutenant looked surprised. "Why?" he blurted out.

"Because I am not about to obey a possibly-criminal order on the say-so of a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant who claims to be speaking for the head of Army Force Central. If General Sumner wants me to fire on Danville, he can damn well formally record an order to do so. I'm sure that, if we lose, it will make lovely reading in the war crimes trial he'll be facing. You're dismissed, lieutenant."

The lieutenant's eyes narrowed. "You're making a mistake, Colonel."

Colonel Gilbert smiled at him jovially. "Lieutenant, you have two choices. You can get your ass out of my command center now, or I can and will have you executed for threatening a superior officer during wartime." He dropped the smile like a mask and pulled a pistol out of his drawer, setting it on his desk. "Go, Lieutenant. That's an order."

The lieutenant looked down at the pistol, then back up in Colonel Gilbert's face. With a curt nod, he turned and walked out.

Colonel Gilbert pressed a button on his intercom, calling the officer in charge of base security. "Captain McNamara, there's a lieutenant leaving my office now. Make sure he gets the fuck out of the building. If he tries to come back in, hold him on my authority until I've cleared it."

"Yes, sir. If he doesn't want to go?"

"He threatened me, and would be disobeying a direct order."

"Understood, sir. He is apparently leaving directly."

"Good to hear. Keep him out."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

"We are announcing a recall of Mayor Abercrombie!" Catalina yelled from the top of the steps. They'd moved the protests to the front of City Hall, and were now trying to force the city to deal with them.

"He has abdicated his responsibilities to this city! He has abandoned it instead of responding to the allegations against him! He has relinquished his right to office!"

The crowd below cheered their agreement. Off to the side, several police officers watched them warily.

Adyson peered across at the other buildings nearby, watching for snipers. The few troops left in the army base weren't necessarily going to give up quite that easily, they suspected, so they were keeping an eye out just in case.

The lieutenant mayor came out of the City Hall, angrily, escorted by a half-dozen police officers. She was a short Caucasian woman with bleached blonde hair and a look of too much plastic surgery, and had been one of Mayor Abercrombie's confidantes. The information dump that Senator Bailey had provided had said that she was part of the Council, and had been involved with causing negotiations to fail between the factions after Shatter Day.

"I order you to disperse!" she shouted. The police officers nervously looked at the crowd.

"In the name of the people of Danville, I order you to step aside and return the government to the people!" Catalina yelled in return.

"Officers! Arrest her!" the lieutenant mayor ordered. The police looked at each other, and at the protesters that had them massively outnumbered. Several soldiers stood just behind Catalina, carrying their rifles.

Adyson saw a bit of movement in one of the buildings across the square, and pulled up her binoculars. The barrel of a rifle was coming up, aiming at the group at the top of the steps. She flipped her radio on. "Sniper, building 9, 3 floors from the top."

"Got it," the reply came back.

Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. Adyson saw the muzzle flash from the sniper, and an instant later, the sniper fell back, hit by a counter-sniper's shot.

Quickly, Adyson turned her attention to the City Hall steps, where Catalina had fallen over. She couldn't see whether the shot had hit her or not, because of the crowd that had gathered around her. The lieutenant mayor looked smug, then terrified. The police behind her dove for cover as the soldiers raised their rifles and fired. The lieutenant mayor went down in a hail of gunfire.

The soldiers continued up the steps, covering the police officers, who wisely stayed down. Several of them turned and scanned the buildings nearby, watching for more snipers. One pointed at Adyson, then nodded as he listened to his radio.

Louise stepped up to the top of the steps, turning to the crowd. "Catalina Hernandez has been murdered, the latest victim of the Council!" she shouted. "The city government has lost all claim to governance! In the name of the people, we are taking control of the city until free and fair elections can be held!"

The crowd murmured among themselves - positively, it seemed.

"Will you follow us?" Louise shouted.

"YES!" the crowd screamed back.

* * *

"Danville's in open revolt, General," Archer said. "Colonel Gilbert refuses to fire without an explicit, documented order from you."

General Sumner sat, staring at the video screens on his wall, flashing through status reports from across the country. He didn't respond to Archer's statement.

"General..."

"I heard you." He didn't move, continuing to stare at the wall for a long moment before shaking his head. He looked like he'd aged five years in the past day as he turned to Archer. "Suggestions, Alex?"

"We have people in place who can take over NOREASCRUCOM, or at least remove Colonel Gilbert. We could send a messenger to NORWESCRUCOM, although I doubt Colonel Smathers would be any more cooperative. I don't think sending troops in to Danville would work, to be honest."

"What troops?" General Sumner laughed without a trace of humor. "If I pulled troops from Indianapolis to put down Danville, Indianapolis would be in revolt before they arrived. And it's the same across the whole fucking country. We're stretched so thin keeping a lid on things that we can't afford to move on our own cities, much less start an offensive against Canada. If the Canadians would just attack, I could use that to rally the nation. But they're just sitting there, waiting for us."

"We need to take out Danville, then, before this can spread."

"I'm aware of this, yes." General Sumner set his glasses on the desk and pinched his nose, taking a calming breath. "Activate the elements in NOREASCRUCOM to take out Gilbert. He's an honest man, but right now, we need a right bastard running things there. Who's his second?"

"Major Martin. She's one of ours. Mother's a Royal, Senator Martin. Father was a Patriot, got unlucky at Pittsburgh."

General Sumner nodded. "Right, right. I remember now. Good man. Too bad we lost him there. Okay. Give her the order to force him to cooperate, or take command if he won't."

"Yes, Sir." Archer turned and left the office to go make a phone call.

* * *

"Hey," Phineas said, walking into Doc Tjinder's lab. The doctor was spoon-feeding Sergeant Hathaway, whose arms hung limply at his sides. Occasionally, they twitched as they adjusted to their new implants.

"Hey, Phineas," Holly said. She was sitting on the opposite side of the room, helping Corporal Oates take a drink of water. All of first squad had gotten their implants, so they were all re-learning how to use their arms. From experience with Colin, he estimated they should start regaining control later tonight. With eight soldiers needing help, everyone was looking forward to that.

"Doc, I just got word. The next batch of implants just got here. When should I tell squad 2 to prep for their lung implants?"

Doc Tjinder looked around and sighed. "I would like to do the neurological implants for squad 1 tomorrow, and they will need the infirmary. They should recover quickly, though. Maybe the day after tomorrow?"

"Baljeet, I think we can make it work tomorrow," Holly said, and Phineas was surprised to hear anyone use the doctor's given name. "The neurological implants don't actually require any downtime, correct?"

"Only as a precaution," Doc Tjinder said. "If something goes wrong, we need to be able to resolve it as quickly as possible. That is easier to do if they are under observation."

"Awesome," Holly said. "Let's have them help watch squad 2. The two squads can keep an eye on each other."

Doc thought for a moment before agreeing. "Yes, that could work."

"That's our plan, then," Phineas said.

"It may help that there are now only seven men in squad 2," Doc said with a sad expression. Master Corporal Duval had been part of that squad before being chosen by lot to make the delivery run into Minnesota.

"Lieutenant Desjardins is taking his place," Phineas said. "So it's still eight."

"Heard from Isabella?" Holly asked with forced casualness.

"No. They were trying to escape, and then..." He stared at the floor for a long moment. "Ferb says he'd have heard if they got captured. Last I heard, they were going to try to get into Sanford Central. I hope..."

Holly stood up and walked over to him, clasping his arm. "She'll be fine."

"Yeah. I know. While I'm here, being useless." Phineas turned and walked out of the lab.

* * *

"This had better work," Colin muttered as he backed the truck into the loading dock in the complex to one side of Scott Air Force Base. They'd identified this as the easiest entry point into Sanford Central, but easiest didn't necessarily mean easy.

He hopped out of the truck and climbed the stairs up to the delivery level. "Two slaves inbound?" the clerk said, checking an electronic tablet. Irving had gotten a fake invoice into their system, which had let them get the delivery in this far. Four guards stood around the edges of the loading dock, weapons ready. Colin noticed that they'd moved to DIMMER rifles already, although the pistols at their belts were standard military 9mm.

"That's what I'm told," Colin said. He pulled out a ring of keys and flipped through them to the appropriate ones, then unlocked the back of the truck.

Two tall crates sat in the back. Colin lowered the gate and walked in; the clerk followed, and two of the guards shifted to look inside the truck.

Colin flipped through his keys to find the right one, and unlocked the left crate. Isabella stood inside, wearing just her slave collar and the thin tunic. To one side, a chemical toilet sat; a small trashcan held MRE wrappers.

"You. Out," the clerk said. Glaring at both of them, she stepped out of the crate. The clerk held his tablet up to her collar; it bleeped, and the clerk nodded. "Stand over there," he said, pointing toward a white line on the loading dock. With a surly expression, she walked over there and put her toes on the line.

Colin unlocked the other side, pulling the door open. Irving sat inside, looking dejected in his tiny little shorts. Colin knew Isabella could take care of herself, but he was much less certain on Irving. He'd tried to argue them into letting Irving play the truck driver and putting the fake collar on himself, but they'd made the point that he'd be in much better position on the outside to help them escape once they'd gotten the data they needed, while Irving would be much more useful inside with access to their computers.

"Up," the clerk said, and Irving stumbled to his feet. The tablet bleeped again when placed next to Irving's collar. "Go stand next to the other one," he said, waving vaguely toward Isabella, and Irving shaded his eyes as he joined Isabella on the line.

The clerk tapped on the tablet for a moment, then nodded to Colin. "All set. Thank you. See yourself out."

Colin took one last look at Isabella and Irving as he climbed down the steps and climbed into the truck. He put it in gear and pulled out of the loading dock, hoping he'd get to see them again.


	9. The Center Cannot Hold

"Wait there," the clerk said as the truck drove away. Isabella kept her expression the same, but looked around the loading dock. Four guards. One clerk. But she couldn't do what she needed to from here. She had to get further inside. The central computer system for the Council of Sanford was here, and it was fiercely protected.

The clerk talked into his tablet for a moment, and then a young woman with lieutenant's bars came out of the doors. She had coppery skin and short, straight black hair. She held up a palmtop to the clerk's tablet, and apparently the expected data transferred. She nodded to him, then looked at the two of them. "Follow me," she said, swiping her badge and then pressing her palm on the pad next to the door.

She led them through a sterile white corridor with unmarked doors on both sides. Each door had a palm reader next to it. "Welcome to Sanford Central," she said. "You discovered things you really shouldn't have, and now you're never getting out of here alive. But, that doesn't mean that your life here has to be miserable. There are multiple categories of slave here, and which group you end up in depends on your behavior. You start in block D, with other uncategorized slaves. Behave, and you can get moved to C, B, or even A. Block A, you'd hardly even know you're a slave any more, and you can even have your own servants of level B or below.

"But if you misbehave and make our lives difficult, you can get demoted to block E. You don't want that. Keep it up, and you can end up in block F. You really don't want that, Those are experimental subjects. Assuming you survive long enough to misbehave again, there is no block G. They just give you to the torturers to practice on until you die. They're very good at keeping you alive, though, so you'll be wishing you were dead long before you it happens." They reached a door marked D4. The lieutenant swiped her badge across the pad, then pressed her palm on it, and the door unlocked with a _*click*_. She gestured them in. They came into a small, unoccupied lounge. It looked almost identical to the one Isabella had seen in Sanford West just a week and a half before.

"I'm Lieutenant Griffiths," the lieutenant said. "I'm in charge of block D4, which is where you are. For now, you two are the only residents."

"What happened to the others?" Irving asked nervously.

"One slave moved all the way up to group B for informing us about an escape plan by the other two that were in here. They're both in group F for now. I don't expect them to stay there long." She gave a vicious smile, a slash of white across her face.

"So what do we do here?" Isabella asked, looking around.

"For now, you have a little time to rest up. They'll add you to a work party tomorrow, but the work isn't terribly taxing. Most of what you'll be doing is providing relief for Council members who are visiting, either permanently or temporarily."

"Permanently?" Irving asked.

"Since you're in here now, there's really no reason to hide what the Council has been up to. You're never getting out. You probably were told that the leaders of the Dixie and Columbia factions were enslaved. They've been on our side all along. They hide out here in an honorable retirement. Others who can't be allowed to be seen in public are here as well. You'll probably get to know them far better than you'd like. Sucks to be you. Literally, even." The lieutenant led them through the lounge into a hallway. Isabella saw that this was also laid out just like Sanford West, with four bedrooms and a bathroom coming off a short hallway.

The lieutenant looked at her tablet for a moment, then pointed at Irving. "You are designated Dominic. Your bedroom's there," she said, hooking her thumb at the door that had a panel next to it that read 'Bedroom One'. "You," she pointed at Isabella, "are designated Delia. You're in bedroom two," she gestured toward a door marked appropriately.

"Why the names?" Irving asked.

"Your old lives are gone. You'll be renamed as you move between groups. It's easier for us to track you this way."

"Why not just D4-1 and D4-2, then?" Isabella asked.

"Too easy to confuse D4-1 and D1-4. Dominic is not the same as David." The lieutenant looked smug. "Anyway, there's a change of clothes in each of your rooms. Go change, and toss the slave wear into the laundry, just off the lounge. I'll be back in a couple hours to get you some lunch."

Isabella watched the lieutenant go, then looked at Irving. He gave her a faint smile and shrugged, for the benefit of the cameras that she knew were watching them. She touched the panel on her bedroom door, and it slid open.

Inside was a bed made out of a solid material, all one unit including the pillow. A sheet lay on top of it, and a folded pile of dark grey cloth. She saw that there were four small rings embedded into the bed, about halfway up, all along the side. She walked over to it, and saw that there were four more along the other side, plus two more each at the head and foot. _Attachment points for ropes and chains_ , she thought. _Hopefully I can get out of here before anybody decides to test them out._

She shook the dark grey cloth loose, and found a knit blouse and a pair of loose knit pants, exactly like she'd worn at Sanford West. The name 'Delia' was embroidered in pink just above the left breast. She set them on the bed and looked around the rest of the room.

Across the room was a small desk and a small dresser. The dresser contained more dark grey outfits. At the bottom of it was a pair of grey slippers. On the desk was a computer screen, integrated into the back of the desk, and a keyboard embedded in the desk surface. No access ports or cables were visible.

From above the door, a small black arc in the corner marked the camera. She was sure that, as a new slave, she was being watched carefully. She pulled the knit pants on, hiking up the bottom of the tunic as little as possible. Making sure to keep her back to the camera, she pulled her tunic off, tossing it onto the bed, then picked up the knit blouse and put it on. It clung a bit more than the tunic, as expected, but hopefully the palmtop didn't show. Taking a quick look around the room, she picked up the tunic and pressed the panel on the door, opening it again.

Irving was just coming out of his room, across the hall. He wore knits just like hers, except his read 'Dominic' in blue, and he carried the pair of shorts he'd been wearing, balled up in his hand. She gestured him down the hall, and he led the way back to the lounge. "Where's this laundry we're supposed to put these in?" he asked. "And did you get any underwear?"

"Over there?" she gestured toward a door across the lounge. "And no, of course not. I'm surprised they gave me pants, to be honest. I wouldn't think they'd want that much in the way."

He laughed, a quick outburst that was quickly smothered. "I suppose. What are you in for?"

She opened the door to the laundry room, and tossed her tunic into the chute on the far side. Unlike Sanford West, this slave pen didn't appear to have its own laundry facilities. She supposed laundry was one of the jobs the work parties did. Irving sent his shorts down as well.

"I had a boyfriend who turned out to be on the Council. I found out about it and broke up with him," she said. "He didn't take it well. How about you?"

"I worked with the ASF, and got caught trying to break into their computers," he said reluctantly. They'd decided his cover story should be as close to his real life as possible.

"That sucks," she said as she took a seat on one of the couches. She looked around the lounge - two small couches, although they looked newer than the ones at Sanford West. A flat-screen television, which was off. The door they'd come in, with its palm reader next to it, the door to the bedrooms, the door to the laundry chute, and one more door. One camera, up in a corner - she suspected it wouldn't be able to see her if she was low enough on the other couch. She stood up again, investigating the last door. It led to a small dining room, with a door on the far side that had a palm reader next to it. Irving looked over her shoulder.

"I suppose we could find some way to kill the time," he suggested salaciously. She gave him her best death glare, hiding a smile. They'd agreed that he should try to hit on her when possible, to make any watchers less likely to suspect they were working together. "Just a suggestion," he added hurriedly.

She pushed past him to flop down on the couch that had its back to the camera. She looked around quickly, not spotting any other cameras. Carefully, she peeled the palmtop away from her stomach, hiding it in a crack in the couch.

 _Okay, Colin. Now, give me the distraction I need._

* * *

Colin left the truck in the parking area of the base, in a row of several others that looked just like it. He walked through the base like he belonged there, avoiding the Sanford Central complex on the edge. They'd planned out how the best ways for him to help neutralize the security systems from outside, but all he could do now was hope they'd work.

He turned a corner, and a quick check confirmed that he was unobserved in the narrow alley between two warehouses. A boost from his implants and he leapt up, grabbing the edge of the roof. He swung his briefcase over the edge, then followed it. He slithered across the roof, staying low to prevent someone from accidentally catching a glimpse of him. This was harder during the day, but he needed to do what he could do quickly, so they could get the information Isabella and Irving needed and get out before someone realized who they really were.

The electrical transformers just outside the base were well within range of the metal eater rifle. He only had one shot, but that should be all he'd need. He pulled the rifle out of the briefcase he carried and reassembled it, figuring out the best place to target. There was an interconnect point where the effect would carry to all the high-tension wires running through the area. He'd take down pretty much all power to St. Louis doing this, but right now, that was collateral damage he could cope with.

He sighted in on the interconnect, and squeezed the trigger. Right where he'd aimed, he saw a red glow appear, and then the interconnect began to melt. The red spread through the transformers, racing up to reach the power lines. Arcs began forming, crackling loudly, and then a transformer exploded. Power cables started falling as the towers that held them up melted, and then they melted down themselves before they ever reached the ground.

Colin disassembled the rifle and put it in the briefcase. By the transformers, sparks and molten metal flew, hitting the buildings underneath the power lines. One of them started smoldering, and then flames appeared on the roof. A second building caught further along the power lines. In the distance, he could hear shouting, and sirens. He found the roof hatch for the warehouse he was in and listened at it for a moment. He couldn't hear anything, so he slid it open and looked down.

It was barely lit inside by the battery-operated safety lights, but he couldn't hear anyone. He lowered himself through the hatch, then climbed down to the catwalk over the warehouse. He crossed it as quietly as he could, just in case, then followed the ladder down to the floor.

Hiding a smile, he came out of the warehouse door and gawped at the flames coming up on the edge of the base with the rest of the people. A sergeant saw them and yelled at them to go help the firefighters. He nodded and trotted in the general direction of the fire with them. He peeled off to find the truck, and put his briefcase in it.

 _There you go, Isabella. One distraction, as ordered._

* * *

The lights flickered, and then mostly went out. A few of the ceiling panels stayed on, dimmer, presumably battery-powered. The doors would be locked, but that was a fixable problem for her. She pulled out her palmtop and snapped it together.

Irving sat up as well. He nodded at the camera, and she shook her head with a smile. "Cameras are on a separate system than the locks and backup lights, and even if the camera still works, their terminals probably just got forcibly rebooted. Let's go, we've got a couple minutes before they're back up."

She led him back to the door on the far side of the dining room. The light on the lock shone in the dim light, and she hooked the palmtop into it. A moment later, the lock clicked and turned green. She eased the door open and peered out into the corridor beyond.

The dim light showed that this was a service corridor, with laundry baskets placed to catch items thrown into the chutes, and doors marked for each of the other slave pens.

"What does this get us?" Irving asked. "This just lets us into where the other slaves are."

"Right, but the guards aren't likely to come this way. Let's see if I can get a map on where we need to go." She reattached her palmtop to the lock, checking to see what systems she could access from here. A moment later, a small schematic filled the palmtop's screen. "Right. This way, then. The President's room is off the end of this hall."

She'd had a mission planned here once, to assassinate President Sherman. They hadn't known that this was Sanford Central at the time, though, just that the President liked to visit occasionally. The mission had been called off because it was decided that Sherman was more symbolic than actually important.

"Ah," Irving said, nodding.

She led the way down the hall, checking the door markings as she went. They passed through the other D blocks, then into C and B blocks before they reached the unmarked door at the end of the corridor.

"Through here?" he asked.

"Yes."

This door was unlocked, she found, so she listened at it briefly with her enhanced hearing, then opened it just a crack. The hallway was clear, so she scampered across and opened the door on the far side. She waved Irving in, and then closed the door behind him. The room inside was dimly lit, and had a large, impressive desk on one side, with a couple smaller desks on the opposite wall. A large bed occupied much of the back wall.

"Welcome to the President's playroom," she said.

Irving looked around with a grimace. "So what do we do now?"

"We wait for the generator to come back on." Isabella sat at the President's desk and spun the chair around.

"Will they find us here?"

"No, there's no cameras in here. Sherman doesn't want anybody watching what he does."

With a flicker, the lights came back on, and the computers on the desks came up with a beep.

"And we're in business," she said, hooking her palmtop into the computer built into the impressive desk.

* * *

"Colonel?" Captain McNamara leaned through the office door, which was open.

Colonel Gilbert looked up at him and gestured him inside. "Yes?" His secretary was off getting some lunch, but he was still digging through some paperwork.

McNamara came in, closing the door behind him. "Just something hinky I thought you should know about, sir. I was in the mess a few minutes ago, and Major Martin got a phone call. She took one look at the phone, looked around, and practically ran out of the mess hall. She came back in about a minute later looking very worried, and could hardly eat."

Colonel Gilbert shrugged. "Okay, and?"

"You've seen her phone, sir. She's very proud of it."

"Yes, I remember. A gift from her mother, the Senator."

"It wasn't that phone. It was a much older one. A cheap, bulky flip phone."

"Odd. Anything after that?"

"Not that I saw. I know it's not much, but...it was off. It wasn't like her."

Colonel Gilbert nodded. "Thank you, Captain. I'll keep an eye on her."

There was a knock at the door, and Major Martin said, "Colonel?" through it.

Colonel Gilbert put his finger to his lips, then gestured the captain to a back corner of the room. He flipped on the recorder unit and said, "Yes, Major?"

Major Martin opened the door and came in, swinging it closed behind her without taking her eyes off of the colonel. She had dark brown eyes and pale skin under short-cropped brown hair, and radiated a command presence far out of proportion to her petite frame. She also, he noticed, had a pistol on her belt. That was uncommon for someone on the base, but not unheard of.

He'd worked with her for about a year now, and knew that she'd been placed here to keep an eye on him. Her family's presence in the highest circles of government meant that she had connections he could never hope to have. He'd gone as high as he could, at colonel; while he knew she'd earned her promotions, he also knew she hadn't exactly had to fight for them, and she'd end up a general if she didn't follow her mother into Chicago politics before then.

"Colonel, I need to ask you to reconsider the order from General Sumner," she said nervously.

"I never received an order from General Sumner," he said calmly, keeping his hands on his desk. He kept his eyes on her, resisting the urge to flick them over to see what Captain McNamara was doing.

"You know what I mean, Sir. The message that Lieutenant Dillinger brought."

"Perhaps you can refresh my memory, Major, and inform me how you know about a message that was delivered directly to me with no hard copy of any sort."

She raised her eyebrows at him, shaking her head. "Do you really need to ask that, Sir? You know who my mother is."

"I was not aware that the Senator was that involved in the day-to-day operations of the Army," he said blandly.

"You know damn good and well what I'm talking about! Sir," she hastily added. "You were ordered to launch a tumbler missile at Danville. I've been told to make sure you do."

"Do I have an actual written order, Major?"

"No. Will you launch?"

"No. I will not launch on an American city without a direct order. I will be damned if I'm going to set myself up as the fall guy for your Council, Major. I do know damn good and well what you're talking about, and I know that following that order will get me court-martialed as soon as it's convenient."

Major Martin recoiled as if struck, then straightened up. "Fine. If that's how you're going to be about it, I'm sorry about this, Sir." She pulled her pistol out of her holster and pointed it at him. "Will you give the order, or will a mysterious Central spy have snuck in and assassinated you?"

She was so focused on what she was doing that she didn't hear Captain McNamara coming up behind her. He grabbed the pistol, forcing it up just as it went off, blowing a hole in the ceiling. He tried to force it away from her, but she took his focus as an opportunity. She elbowed him in the stomach, then used his arm as leverage as she sank down, flipping him forward, over her shoulder. She had held onto the pistol through this, and started to point it at Colonel Gilbert.

He didn't give her the chance. He'd taken the opportunity to retrieve his own pistol from his desk during the fight, and he fired two shots into her chest. Her eyes were surprised as she tumbled to the floor, her pistol falling from lifeless fingers.

Captain McNamara climbed back onto his feet, looking at the body on the floor. "Senator Martin's going to have our heads for this."

"That's later," the colonel said. "Right now, we're alive. I'll get you a list of other officers who I suspect may want to join us. We need to get as many of them as we can onto our side, quickly." He smiled at the captain. "She can only have our heads if she still has hers, Captain. I for one intend to go down fighting."

The door burst open, and several MPs came in. "Sergeant," Captain McNamara said, "Major Martin just tried to assassinate the colonel. Call the medics to come get her, and secure the base. Nobody gets in or out without a direct order from myself or the colonel."

"Yes, sir!" the sergeant said, looking at the major, the pistol lying next to her, and the smoking gun sitting on the colonel's desk.

* * *

"Got it," Irving said. "Jesus. All the keys for their encryption. Storing on a data stick."

"Excellent. I've removed all records of us from their systems, and sent Lieutenant Griffiths off on a wild goose chase," Isabella said.

He looked back at her. She was very good at this - almost as good as he was, he thought. Between the two of them, they'd made the internal computer system sit up and beg, and now had almost complete control of it. If they had enough data sticks, they could pull the entire database with them. As it was, she was getting a decent chunk onto that little palmtop of hers. He wondered how he could get one of his own.

"Let's get out of here, then," he said. "Can we get out dressed like this?"

"Nope," she said, popping her collar off. "God, I hate that thing. There should be some clothes in the closet over there."

"To fit the President, I assume?" he said, frowning. The President was short and stocky, and there was no way his clothes would fit either of them. Absently, he removed his own collar as well.

"No, he has quarters elsewhere. He likes to dress the slaves he's using in fancy outfits sometimes," she said distastefully. "Actually, it's more that he likes to tear them off."

"Ew." Irving flipped through the closet, finding costumes of various sorts. He flipped through them, wincing as he saw what was in there. "These are all for him to have slaves wear?"

"His tastes are rather eclectic, as I understand it," Isabella said blandly.

Irving kept going through the closet, finding some dark suits for both men and women. "He liked to dress them as Secret Service?"

"Sometimes, yes. I'm sure the actual Secret Service officers protecting him much preferred him taking that out on slaves than on them."

"Still kind of awkward. These look like the best of the lot," Irving said, holding up two black suits that looked like they should fit them.

"I'd agree. We can use those to get out - pretend we were agents coming down to check on things here in preparation for a Presidential visit. Give me mine." She walked over and took it from him, holding it up against her body. "Looks good." She set it on the desk and pulled her top off, then stepped out of the knit pants.

Irving shrugged and did the same. If it didn't bother her, presumably it shouldn't bother him. He considered it a bit unfair, though - he wasn't really that interested in people who looked like her, but she apparently was interested in people who looked like him.

They dressed in the suits, finding fake earpieces in a drawer. Their discarded collars and outfits were bundled up in another drawer.

"Looks good," she said. "Let's get the rest of this set up." She turned to the computer and brought up the security cameras. Guards were patrolling the halls, as expected. She set up the magic ID cards, clipping one to her suit and one to Irving's. They were entered into the security system, allowing them full access to any door in the building.

"Okay. I'll ping Colin," Irving said, sending a quick message. "Let's go."

They waited for a moment when there were no guards nearby, and slipped out the door.

* * *

Colin was awakened by the buzzing of the phone Irving had given him. A message had just arrived as he napped in the truck.

The disaster with the power station had the soldiers running all around the base, trying to find the culprit, so Colin had decided to just lay low for now. They seemed to be calming down a bit, fortunately.

 **All set. Meet us by the front entrance.**

He smiled, shaking his head. Leave it to Isabella to go in as a slave in the side entrance and leave triumphantly through the front door.

He sat up, looking around. There didn't seem to be anyone nearby, so he climbed out of the truck. He looked at the briefcase quickly, deciding it didn't need to come along.

The front entrance to Sanford Central wasn't far away, and nobody bothered him as he walked toward it. There were half a dozen MPs guarding the gate in front of it, separating it from the rest of the base, but he could see the front entrance through the fence. A car stopped at the gate. The MPs checked it and the people in it, then waved it through.

He kept walking past them, looking for a spot he could wait in.

"You! Stop!" one of the MPs yelled.

He looked around - he didn't have any hiding places in front of him that he could see. He decided to bluff instead, so he stopped and turned toward them.

Two MPs were approaching him.

"What's your name, soldier?" one asked.

"Kim. Sergeant Daniel Kim," Colin said, using the name from his fake identity papers.

"Badge?" the other said, holding out her hand. Colin handed her the access badge. She swiped it across the scanner at her belt, which beeped and turned green.

The two MPs looked at each other, and one nodded. "Come with us, Sergeant," he said. "We just need to double-check something."

They started leading him back toward the gate. He noticed that one of them hung back, and that both of them had DIMMERs holstered at their sides, outside their service pistols. As a precautionary measure he brought his implants up to speed, tracking the MP behind him by the sounds she made.

One of the other guards was bringing something up on a tablet. His hand was on his DIMMER, and he showed the tablet to the MP walking next to Colin.

On the tablet, Colin saw a police sketch that looked a lot like himself, and a still from a surveillance video of him walking near the safe house in Chicago.

 _Shit._

He reached out and grabbed the MP next to him, throwing her into the one approaching. He heard a DIMMER being unholstered behind him, and kicked back, hitting that soldier in the stomach. He both heard and felt the breath fly out of her as he spun.

The DIMMER was still in mid-air, about at eye level, as she'd flung it upwards when he kicked her. He snatched it out of the air and fired it at her, hoping they hadn't palm-locked the pistols like they had the rifles. It fired, hitting her square in the chest, and he spun back toward the other MPs. They were starting to clamber up as he fired twice more.

One of the MPs was in the guard shack at the gate, yelling into a radio, while the other two were charging toward him. One was pulling out her DIMMER, while the other was aiming at him. Colin dove to the side, rolling, and the shot went far wide of him. He came up aiming at them, and two more shots hit their targets. He tossed the empty weapon aside and ran toward the two guards he'd thrown together, picking up their DIMMERs. A DIMMER pistol only held five shots. He suspected he'd need both pistols, and maybe more.


	10. Things Fall Apart

Isabella and Irving walked toward the entrance to Sanford Central, quickly, but not quickly enough that anyone would think they were hurrying. Isabella had to keep Irving from trying to run, but he caught on eventually.

The guards didn't even give them a second glance, and most of the doors outside the slave pens weren't locked with palm readers. The few they did run across opened with the faked access they'd given their temporary badges.

The front lobby area was unoccupied as they walked through. Isabella guessed that the receptionist was at lunch. She was looking forward to lunch herself, actually.

Through the front windows, she saw that there was some sort of commotion by the gate. She hoped Colin wasn't involved, but couldn't tell from this distance. They walked out the front door as a car pulled up. Two guards came around and opened the back door. One set up a walker for the person inside. Isabella kept walking, Irving two steps behind her.

Mayor Abercrombie stepped out of the car and leaned on the walker, his leg wrapped in bandages. He said something to the guard, laughing, as he took a couple hops away from the car. Her motion caught his eye, apparently, and he looked up at her. He peered at her, confused, for just a second, then recognition dawned. "You!" he shouted, pointing at her. "Guards! That's Echo Three! Take her down!"

Isabella was already bringing her implants up to speed, leaping toward them. "Irving, run!" she shouted, body-slamming one guard into the side of the car. The other was pulling out a DIMMER, but too slow; she grabbed it away from him.

Pulling the guard's DIMMER had pulled the guard himself into Mayor Abercrombie, who toppled over, screaming in agony. Isabella reversed the DIMMER and shot the guard.

The one she'd slammed into the car grabbed for her, and she elbowed him in the stomach, then yanked him away from the car, throwing him onto the pile with the mayor and the other guard. Another DIMMER shot kept him down. The mayor was still screaming at the bottom of the pile.

"Get in!" Irving shouted. He'd climbed into the driver's seat of the car, and was putting it into gear. She saw more guards coming out of Sanford Central, and slid into the back seat the mayor had just vacated, pulling the door closed just before a DIMMER shot splashed off the window.

The car took off, racing toward the gate. She could see now that Colin was stalking toward the gate, which had one MP talking into a radio. Several other MPs lay on the ground behind him, motionless. Irving crashed through the gate, stopping in front of Colin, and Isabella popped the back door open. "Get in!" she hollered, and he dove in next to her, the door closing on its own as Irving stomped on the gas.

"What happened?" Colin asked, just before she could say the same thing.

"We got the data we need, and we would have gotten away clean if we hadn't run into Abercrombie just as we were leaving. How about you?"

"They've got surveillance video of me, so my cover was blown."

Irving was racing through the base, and it was apparent that the MPs were trying to block their way. "Aim for a fence and just keep going," Isabella said.

"We should grab the truck if we can," Colin said. "They're certainly going to look for this car."

Isabella thought for a moment. "Get near the truck. You two get out and head away in it, I'll take the car and try to draw them off. I'll meet you back at the safe house."

"Why you?" Irving asked from the front seat.

"Because I've got the most experience with this sort of clusterfuck?" she said. "And it's critical that Irving get out with the keys. Keep him safe."

Colin looked like he was about to argue, but thought better of it.

"We're kind of near it, and I think we've lost the MPs for the moment," Colin said.

"Sounds good." Isabella pointed to an alley off to the left. "Go between those warehouses and stop the car."

Irving pulled the car to a stop, and they quickly reshuffled who was where. Colin and Irving vanished into the warehouse as Isabella took off like a rocket, driving through the base, trying to find a fence to the outside. As an Air Force base, this one didn't have much in the way of heavily armed vehicles, fortunately, but this car didn't handle like it had the heavy bulletproofing that would keep it safe from the machine guns on a Humvee.

 _Speaking of which,_ she thought. Two of them blocked her way toward the fence. She cranked the wheel around, running parallel to the fence. She didn't see any more of them ahead, fortunately.

 _Can't this damn thing go any faster?_ The car was designed for comfort, not speed, she could tell.

A machine gun rattled behind her. She swerved the car, trying to ruin their aim, but the car handled like a cow. A set of rapid thumps from the trunk said that she hadn't evaded their shots entirely, but they didn't seem to have hurt anything. _Maybe this thing's more bulletproof than I thought?_

 _Time to test that_. She cranked the wheel to the left, toward the fence, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. Shots slammed into the side of the car, but didn't seem to penetrate.

Grinning, she smashed through the fence.

The grin vanished as the ground pulled away from the car, which leapt into the air and then suddenly hit the ground again with a crunching sound. The crunching was followed by a tearing sound, and then a scraping sound as the car began to slow. In the mirror, she could see a tire and some of an axle sticking out of the ditch she'd just tried to leap over.

The car slid to a halt in a field just outside the base. She opened out the door and took off toward the nearest group of trees. _Maybe..._

The sound of approaching Humvees got louder, and she could hear a helicopter in the distance. She glanced back, and saw a Humvee approaching from each side, their machine guns manned. She looked forward, and made a quick calculation. There was no way she could reach the trees before they caught up with her. She pulled her palmtop from a pocket and activated the self-destruct, tossing it aside, then dropped back to a walk and raised her hands in the air. Behind her, she heard a *pop* as the palmtop destroyed itself.

The first Humvee stopped a good sixty yards away from her; the second curved around in front of her, and stopped between her and the trees, even further away.

A soldier in the first Humvee stood up, aiming a DIMMER rifle at her. She stared down the barrel, and saw him fire. The first shot went wide, and she fought not to laugh. Every minute they spent capturing her was one more that Colin and Irving could use to escape, hopefully.

The second shot hit her square in the chest, and her last thought before unconsciousness was that she hoped they didn't give her to Mayor Abercrombie.

* * *

Irving sat in the driver's seat of the truck, waiting in the line by the base exit gate. He had swapped into Colin's driver uniform, leaving the shirt unbuttoned so it wasn't quite as obvious how loose it was on him, while Colin was hiding underneath the truck in a T-shirt and shorts.

The truck in front of him moved, and Irving pulled forward to the inspection checkpoint. His window was already rolled down.

"Destination?" a bored MP asked. Behind him, a dozen more MPs stood ready, with rifles ready to bring up in an instant.

"Back to Chicago," Irving said. "What the hell happened?"

The MP ignored his question. "Cargo?"

"Deadheading. I was delivering two slaves."

The MP looked up at him and sneered, then showed him a tablet. Pictures of Isabella and Colin filled the screen. "Seen either of these two?"

"No, sir."

"Unlock the back of the truck."

"Yes, sir." Irving climbed out, taking the keys with him. He unlocked the tailgate and lifted it out of the way. The MP signaled two of the armed guards, who climbed in. They peeked into the two crates in the back, then came out, shaking their heads. "Empty."

"Okay," the MP said. "Move out."

"Thank you, sir," Irving said, re-locking the tailgate. He climbed back into the truck and drove off slowly, in the direction of Chicago.

He drove far enough to make sure they were well beyond the base's surveillance before stopping the truck. He climbed out, to find that Colin was already rolling out from underneath on the far side. "Let's go," Colin said as they got back into the truck.

"Back to the safe house?"

"Let's find out if Isabella got out first. If they can get the location out of her, it could be a trap."

Irving frowned. "Do you think they could?"

"Probably not, but we shouldn't risk it. If she got out, she can hide there. Do you have another safe house nearby?"

"A few."

"Let's go, then."

Irving put the truck in gear and drove off.

* * *

"How bad is it, Archer?" General Sumner asked, looking over Archer's shoulder.

"Most of the ex-Central bases are still loyal," Archer said. "Southwest is pretty much in open revolt. Some of Dixie and most of Columbia are as well."

"Christ. How?"

"Apparently Colonel Hiram Fucking Gilbert had a recorder running in his office when Major Martin went in to take him out. And with the broadcast centers on regional keys, he was able to show our plans to drop a cruise missile on Danville across all of Columbia, and some fellow travelers ran it in Dixie and Southwest. Oh, by the way, Senator Martin wants your head for her daughter's death."

"My head?"

"Yours, mine, Gilbert's, McNamara's, and anyone else who happens to be handy. She's not feeling fussy after watching her daughter get shot following your orders."

"Jesus." General Sumner sighed. "Do you have any positive news?"

"We caught Echo Three," Archer said.

"Wait, what? How? Where?"

"Trying to get out of Sanford Central."

"Was she alone?"

"No, although it's unclear exactly how many people were in her group. At least three, including the other enhanced soldier. We're still debriefing the soldiers involved."

"Please tell me you aren't giving her to Dutch again," General Sumner said.

"No, Sir, although it was Dutch that caught her."

"Huh. Really?"

"He saw her coming out of the building and screamed bloody murder. She hurt his knee some more in the process, so he's not up to doing anything to her in the first place."

"Your boy finally did something right. About fucking time. So what are they doing with her? Putting a bullet in her head, hopefully."

"She's being sent up here to Chicago."

General Sumner stopped, staring at him. "Why the fuck is she coming to Chicago?"

"President's orders, Sir."

General Sumner put his hand over his face. "Christ. He's worse than Dutch sometimes."

"It's not like that. He's got a clever plan, apparently."

"That's not an improvement, Archer."

* * *

Ferb's eyes flicked across the monitors. American bases were now marked in multiple colors - red were ones known to be loyal to Chicago, green were ones known to be rebelling, and various shades of orange and yellow indicated uncertainty.

"Charlie One from Oscar Two," Colin's voice came over the radio.

"Charlie One, over," Ferb replied.

"We have encryption keys for the data stream coming from the New White House. We're seeing how much of it we can decrypt now."

"Brilliant!" Ferb said.

"There's bad news, too, though. We believe Oscar One was captured."

"What?" Phineas said from behind Ferb. Ferb hadn't heard him enter.

"Sorry," Colin continued. "She sacrificed herself so that we could get out with the data. She thought she could get away, but it looks like it didn't happen. Stalker says he's getting some indication they're shipping her to Chicago."

"Understood," Ferb said quietly. "See what you can do with those keys, and get back to us. Maybe we can end this thing before they do anything to her."

"Yeah. Maybe."

* * *

Isabella clanked her way into the building. She wasn't quite sure where she was - the van she'd been driven in had no windows in the back, they were in an underground parking garage, and she wasn't sure how long she'd been unconscious.

It had been long enough, though. She'd been given the ubiquitous knit outfit that was common for Council slaves, although they hadn't collared her, surprisingly. Not that it mattered much. A chain wrapped around her waist, tight enough that it wouldn't go over either her hips or her breasts. Her wrists were cuffed directly to the chain with almost no play.

Another chain dangled down from the front of her waist, connecting it to the short chain between her ankle cuffs. The chains were all far, far too strong for her to break them.

A guard held onto each one of her arms, leading her to an elevator as the chain between her ankles clanked on the concrete floor of the parking garage, cold against her bare feet.

No collar, no blindfold, no gag - she wondered if they were just going to execute her this time. Her stomach growled - she hadn't had anything to eat in far too long.

"So, where are we?" she asked. Might as well try.

"Chicago," one of the guards said.

"Why?"

"Because that's where they told us to bring you. Stop asking questions."

It was more information than she'd expected, actually. Why would they bring her to Chicago? Public execution didn't seem unlikely, unfortunately. She wondered if they'd gotten the television system back under their control yet.

Other than that - she couldn't really think of any other reason they'd bring her to Chicago without a collar.

Public enslavement? Auctioning her off to Congress? A hostage to get Phineas and Ferb to return to the US?

 _Maybe it's just that they know a collar can't hold me?_

It had, after all, only been ten days since they'd tried to use the Agonizer on her, only to find that Phineas had disabled it. Archer probably hadn't had time to figure out a new way to make the collar's pain generator work on her.

Maybe she was being sent to Archer? She was reasonably sure she wasn't going back to Mayor Abercrombie, since he had been at Sanford Central. He probably needed more surgery on his knee after she knocked him over. Part of her felt guilty about that, but most of her very much did not.

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. The two guards led her in; four more followed them into the elevator. She tried to figure out if she could take them. Maybe if she could get a hand free, but chained like this, not a chance. Her ankles were chained too close together to let her kick. She could hip-check them, perhaps, but that was about it.

A guard pressed the button for the 3rd floor, and the elevator moved up smoothly. She saw that there were only 4 floors, plus 2 floors of underground parking.

 _Where am I?_

They came out into an open area, painted white, with two corridors leading off to either side. Two more guards, Marines in dress black uniforms, waited there. They nodded at the ones who had led her here, who returned into the elevator. The formal guards gestured her toward the nearer corridor on the left. Several doors opened on both sides of the hall, all unmarked. They led her toward a door on the left, which one of them opened.

Inside was a small sitting room. A low couch sat along one wall, along with two comfortable-looking chairs. "Sit," one of the guards said, gesturing toward one of the chairs.

Isabella sat. The guards sat across from her on the couch. One was a tall man with broad shoulders, black hair, and an olive complexion; the other was a shorter woman with a wiry build, pale skin, and auburn hair.

"Some water?" the male guard asked.

"Please," Isabella said. "If there's anything around to eat, that would be really appreciated too." _No harm in asking._

"I'll see what I can do," the female guard said. She pressed a finger to her earpiece, speaking softly.

A moment later, a slave in a Colonial outfit arrived. He wore blue knee breeches, a white shirt under a blue waistcoat, and a red long coat over all of it. He carried a silver salver, on which was a large bottle of water and two large sandwiches. She could smell beef and peppers all the way over here, and her stomach growled again. Holding the tray in one hand, he flipped open a stand with his other hand, then set the tray on top, right next to Isabella's chair.

"Hold a moment," the female guard said, walking to Isabella. In a moment, she had locked Isabella's ankle chain to a ring in the floor, and locked her waist chain to the back of the chair. "You understand you aren't going anywhere, yes?"

Isabella nodded.

"Good." She reached over and unlocked Isabella's wrists from the chain around her waist, then backed away. "Go ahead and eat. We're here for a couple hours."

Isabella picked up the bottle of water, opening it and taking a long drink. "Thank you."

The slave nodded, then left the room at a gesture from the male guard. Isabella picked up a sandwich and took a bite. It was a tasty Italian beef sandwich; she'd had them before on missions into Chicago. She took another bite, savoring it, and washed it down with another swallow of water. Clearing her throat, she looked across at the guards. "So, where are we?"

"The New White House," the male guard said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh," Isabella said. "Why?"

"Not our job to know," the female guard said. "We were told to keep you comfortable for a couple hours until the President is ready to see you."

"Do you know why the President wants to see me?"

"Not our job," she replied.

"Paying attention to what goes on in there is generally not a good idea," the other guard said. "We don't know who you are, particularly. The less we know, the better."

Isabella nodded, and resumed eating the sandwich. Whatever happened, she was going to need to keep her strength up.

* * *

Colonel Gilbert brought up the videoconference screen. Colonels and naval captains, majors and commanders, and even some lower ranks from across the country were banding together now, refusing to obey orders from Chicago, and they'd agreed to coordinate their efforts.

He recognized some of the colonels, men and women he'd served with on his way up the ranks. Others were unfamiliar, but all of them had been vouched for by those he did know. Several of them had survived attacks from Council-affiliated underlings; some had taken over from Council-affiliated superiors. At least a few had removed Council puppets who had killed their superior officers. None of them were generals or admirals, since you had to be part of the Council to get that promotion.

"Hiram, I don't know if we have enough to push on Chicago yet," Colonel Smathers said. Smathers was in charge of NORWESCRUCOM, the western equivalent of Gilbert's command. "Unless you want to drop cruise missiles on them, and that's probably not wise."

"No, I'd prefer that you and I stay out of this entirely. This isn't a job for cruise missiles."

"Not a lot that those of us in the Navy can do either," a captain that Gilbert didn't recognize said with a shrug. "We've got a few ships on the Great Lakes, but that won't help capture Chicago, just level it."

"I think this is a job for the Army and maybe the Marines," Gilbert said.

"I'm probably the closest friendly Army base to Chicago now," Colonel Kearns said. Gilbert had known Kearns since their time together as freshly-minted lieutenants, and knew she was rock-solid.

"Where are you?" Colonel Smathers asked.

"Camp Perry. Northern Ohio," she said.

"Still awfully far. How are we going to get troops close enough to Chicago without starting another war?" Captain Knight, who had succeeded to command of an Air Force Base in Georgia after his commanding officer and her second had killed each other, asked.

"How far from the shore are you, Colonel Kearns?" Gilbert asked, pulling up maps on his tablet as he thought.

"Just a few miles. Why?"

"Captain...I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," he said to the naval officer.

"Captain Kenneth Spencer, Colonel."

"Captain Spencer, how many troops could you transport to Chicago?"

"Quite a few, if we can get them past Detroit without them being sunk. By either side - we'll be passing awfully close to the Canadian border, and they might decide to take us out."

"Get your ships to Camp Perry," Gilbert said. "I'll see what we can do with the Canadians."


	11. Chicago

A message flashed across Ferb's console.

 **Ferb - patch into this conference, please? V**

He wasn't sure why Vanessa wanted him there, but he wasn't about to argue too loudly. She wouldn't interrupt him unless it was important, he was sure.

He joined the videoconference, and the screen filled with encoding artifacts which rapidly cleared. He recognized Vanessa, of course, and the Minister of Defence, and the Prime Minister himself, but not any of the other people.

"Mr. Fletcher, I need some insight," the Prime Minister said abruptly.

"I'll do my best," Ferb said.

"We've received overtures from a Colonel Hiram Gilbert on the American side. He claims they're trying to send troops to Chicago from a Camp Perry in Ohio, transporting them upriver past Detroit. He's asking that we not attack them. Can we trust him?"

"I worked with Colonel Gilbert a bit during the civil war," Ferb said. "He's a good man, in my experience. More importantly, he seems to be one of the key leaders of the rebel faction within the American government right now."

"He'd be putting several thousand troops right off Windsor, though. If he backstabs us..."

"Even so, I don't think there are enough troops that they can ship to be a serious threat to Toronto that way. We can follow them up the river and confirm that they aren't dropping anyone off. And if this is on the up-and-up, this war could be over tomorrow."

The Defence Minister nodded. "I agree. I believe it's worth the risk, Prime Minister."

"In that case, is there anything we can do to help them?"

Ferb pondered for just a moment. "It's possible that loyal American forces could attack them. We could offer to assist them in that case."

"Just offer, though," the Defence Minister said. "It's possible they'd feel our help weakened their political position."

"Agreed," the Prime Minister said. "Go ahead and make the offer."

* * *

"Okay, I think I've got it," Irving said. He glanced over at Colin, who was watching nervously.

"And?" Colin said.

"And...confirmed, she's captured. She's been taken to Chicago."

"Chicago? Really? Why?"

"Not sure. Marked as POW, transferred to some code I don't recognize. She's not marked as having gone on trial, and not as having been specially designated as a Council slave. I've literally never seen that code before."

"Any chance we can get her out?"

"I have no idea whatsoever where they took her, Colin."

Colin sagged. "Damn. Okay. What else can you find?"

Irving typed a bit. "Well, here's the data stream between the New White House and Sanford Central. Let's see if any of those keys will decrypt it."

"How long will that take?"

"Not very long. Let's get it started." Irving typed a bit more, Colin watching over his shoulder. Irving had to fight the distraction from having Colin that close, his breath tickling Irving's ear...

Irving shook his head a bit and set the computer to cycle through the keys. It shouldn't take more than...

The data stream turned green on his monitor, and video feeds popped up. "Holy shit," Irving said.

"What?"

He pointed at the feeds. "That's the Oval Office. That's the Presidential Briefing Room. That's the Situation Room. We have live feeds of the White House itself. Right now, it looks like the President is out of the office."

"Why the fuck are they livestreaming those to Sanford Central?"

"Digital records of what they're doing? I don't know. A pity I couldn't carry more of the archives. Isabella had some data on her palmtop, but..."

"Jesus. Just think of all the deals that these streams must have. If we could release those archives..."

"Hell, we'll probably get something impressive just from what's streaming now."

"Please tell me you're saving all this."

"Oh, hell yes," Irving said.

"What can we do with it?"

"Well, they've shifted authentication of the TV feeds to the regional sub-centers. Some of those are in rebel hands. We can probably take over some of the rest. We can get it almost nationwide."

Colin grinned. "Let's see what's on, eh?"

* * *

Isabella sat back in her chair, trying to catch a bit of sleep. After she'd finished the sandwiches, they'd applied the cuffs to her wrists again without releasing her from the chair. It made it a bit awkward to get comfortable, but she had had to sleep in some very uncomfortable positions while on missions. This wasn't even remotely close to the worst she'd been through.

A knock on the door startled her, and she sat up. Another slave came in, dressed in a Colonial servant's costume. "He's ready for her," he said.

"Okay, Echo Three. Time to go," the female guard said. She came over and unlocked Isabella's ankle chain from the floor, then unlocked her waist chain from the chair. She helped Isabella to standing, and then the slave led her out the door, followed by the two guards.

She was led back to the elevator, and across to another hallway. The plush carpeting in this hall muffled the sounds of her ankle chain. The hallway was shorter on this side, and two Secret Service agents stood flanking the double doors at the end. The slave led her directly to them, and they stepped forward with hand-scanners. One waved the scanner over her from the front, while the other covered her from behind. Apparently they found nothing, as the one in front of her nodded at the slave, who pulled the right-hand door open. She shuffled in to the Oval Office.

It was unexpectedly small, but more impressive than she'd expected. Windows along the back, behind the desk, showed the sun setting behind the Chicago skyline. The desk was imposingly solid, with two chairs in front of it. Two stuffed armchairs sat around a crackling gas fireplace at the near end. Two couches faced each other across a bare coffee table, next to the armchairs. The dark blue carpet was soft against her bare feet.

Four Marines in full dress uniform stood evenly spaced around the room. She saw that each carried a DIMMER rifle, and their eyes watched Isabella's every move.

The slave who had led her here gestured toward the chairs at one end. "Please stand here," he said. She shuffled to the designated spot and continued gawking at the room.

Above the fireplace was a full-length portrait of George Washington. It was flanked by portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. On the mantelpiece she saw a small camera, recording everything in the room, and wondered if Irving had been able to crack it with the codes they'd retrieved.

More paintings decorated the room - a large painting of the original White House in Washington, D.C. covered much of the far wall. She wished she could go over to take a closer look.

The door opposite the one she had entered through opened, and President Sherman came in. He was shorter than she expected, but broad-shouldered, and radiated a presence that made him feel larger than his mere physical size. He wore a perfectly-fitting grey suit, with a white shirt and red tie underneath. His curly black hair was thinning on top, but his dark brown skin made it relatively hard to tell. The whites of his dark brown eyes stood out, and he smiled at her, beaming bright white teeth across his face. She'd seen video of him, but it was a pale imitation of the man himself.

"Welcome, Ms. Garcia-Shapiro," he said as he strode toward her. "I've heard a great deal about you." He reached out his hand to shake hers, and then seemed to suddenly realize that her wrists were still chained to her waist. "Now, Jeffrey, why do we need to treat our guest like this?" he said to the slave standing behind her. "Let's get those chains off of her. I'm sure she isn't planning anything."

Keys clinked behind her, but she found she couldn't tear her gaze away from the President. The cuffs around her wrists were opened, and then the chain around her waist came loose. It rattled as the slave knelt down to unlock her ankles. The slave then turned and carried the chains away.

"Have a seat, please, Ms. Garcia-Shapiro," the President said, gesturing toward the chairs by the fireplace. She sat, and he took the seat across from her. "Can I get you something to drink? I'll have my usual, Jeffrey," he nodded to the slave.

"I'm okay," she said. She glanced around the room, wondering if she could get control of the President and use him as a hostage, but the four Marines with DIMMER rifles told her that she didn't stand much chance there. They could fire freely at her, without worrying about friendly fire harming the President; in the worst case, they'd knock him out. There was no way she could take even two of the Marines down before one of them could hit her.

"Suit yourself. You're probably wondering why you're here, and not locked up waiting for Dutch Abercrombie to get better, or facing a firing squad."

"The thought had crossed my mind, yes."

"You've had a hell of a career, Ms. Garcia-Shapiro. May I call you Isabella?"

"If you'd like, Mr. President."

"Oh, call me Phil." He flashed her that brilliant smile again, and she found herself warming to him, even though he was one of the leaders of the group that had started this civil war and instituted slavery.

"Okay, Phil," she said, and his smile broadened.

"So, as I said, you've had one hell of a career. Infiltrator, computer hacker, assassin. Able to break into - or out of - some of our most secure facilities. And it's not just the implants. The implants didn't let you take control of Sanford West's computer system, or set the bombs in Danville. The implants just took an incredibly talented young woman and made her unstoppable."

She shrugged and nodded at him, wondering where she was going with this.

"One of the things the Council has learned over the years is not to waste talent. A lot of our best people used to be our worst enemies. You'd be a more valuable addition to our team than Dutch, to be honest."

Isabella stared at him. "I'm sorry?"

"Let me make this more concrete. I want you on our side. My offer - full pardons for you, Flynn, and Fletcher. You return home from Canada. We'll make sure you're taken care of properly. Your pick of slaves from the Canadian conquest when we're done, if you want."

She sat back, her eyes narrowing. _With Phineas and Ferb here, we'd all be hostages for each other._ "Ah. So, why do I want to join up with you when it's questionable whether you'll still be in power in a week?"

He waved his hands. "Bah. This little rebellion thing is overblown. It'll be resolved in a day or two. We'll deal with the leaders and everyone else will fall in line. We'll let you do some of that, actually. It would be right up your alley, I think. They're sending a convoy of troops here from Ohio, and the Canucks let them past Detroit earlier today. They'll arrive tomorrow if I don't find a way to stop them." The grin turned vicious, a cruel white scar across his face. "If." He chuckled to himself.

"Oh? If I'm signing on, I want to know how you're planning to stop that. I need to know if you're serious or delusional." She carefully did not look at the camera, and could only hope that Irving was watching, and listening.

He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I can understand that. While we no longer have thermonuclear weapons at this point - we decided to decommission them because they cost too much to maintain and keep topped-up with tritium - we do still have fission weapons available to us. There's a few of them being planted near the Straits of Mackinac. Get the ships over them, and boom! The rebellion is all over, and the fallout all drifts into Canada. Win-win situation, don't you think?"

Isabella was stunned, but couldn't let it show. She saw now that he was charismatic, but also completely mad. She could break his neck before the Marines could take her down, but it wouldn't be enough - there were plenty more equally mad people on the Council. He wasn't worth it.

"Interesting," she finally managed to say. "And if that doesn't work?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Hm?"

"Part of why I've done as well as I have is leaving as little as I can to chance. One solution is good, but two are better, because sometimes the unexpected happens. So what's your plan if they get past the nukes?"

"Oh, there's extra defensive troops in Chicago, in case. Mostly cattle, like everyone. You understand that. You and I, we're just better than most people, so it's only right that we be in charge. But I'm really looking forward to setting off the nuclear weapons. The third person ever to order use of nuclear weapons against hostile forces. US President Truman against Japan, Council President Clarke against DC, and now me, against rebel forces."

She pretended to ponder his offer. "I'll make you a deal," she said. "You stop them, and I'll join up with you. If they make it here, you surrender to me. We can consider it a wager, if you'd like, Phil."

He reached across to shake her hand. "I'll take that bet, Isabella. I expect to win."

* * *

" _Merde_ ," Colin said, his face ashen.

"Huh?" Irving said, looking up from where he was trying to see what else he could decrypt with the keys they'd taken from Sanford Central.

"Isabella's at the New White House. President Sherman just offered her a job. And he's going to nuke the ships going to take Chicago."

Irving paused, staring at Colin as he processed what had just been said. "Wait, what? Nukes?"

"Planted in the Straits of Mackinac. Being planted soon, apparently. We need to stop them from going off."

"How the hell are we going to do that?"

"I don't know," Colin said, frustrated. "Ask Ferb, maybe he has an idea."

"You ask him, I'm going to keep digging in here and see if I find anything."

Colin put his earpiece in and pressed on it. "Charlie One from Oscar Two."

Ferb's voice came back a moment later. "Oscar Two here."

"News for you. First up - Oscar One is confirmed captured and currently at the New White House."

Colin could almost hear Ferb blinking in confusion at the other end of the radio.

"The President is offering her a job if she changes sides. She's agreed to it if he manages to stop the fleet going to Chicago."

"Okay," Ferb said.

"He's setting up nukes in the Straits of Mackinac to do it."

"Wait, what?" Phineas said, cutting into the radio.

"Chicago is trying to stop the rebellion by nuking the troop transports."

"And how is Isabella involved in that?"

"The President told her, and we've got a live video feed of the Oval Office," Colin said.

"Fission or fusion?" Ferb asked.

"Fission," Colin said. "The President said they'd decommissioned their thermonuclear weapons."

"Huh. Okay, we'll see what we can do to clear out the nukes, then," Phineas said.

* * *

"No, Phineas," Ferb said as Phineas turned to leave the room.

Phineas stared at his brother. He knew what Ferb meant. He was too valuable to risk. He couldn't possibly go deal with the nuclear weapons planted there. There was no way he could get there in time and do anything useful, even if it wasn't such a big risk.

"Ferb, I have to do this," he said, setting his shoulders.

"You can't."

"Who can?"

Ferb stared at him for a long moment.

"Exactly."

"What can you do?"

"I'm working on that," Phineas said. "I've got a couple ideas. Do we know how nuclear weapons and tumbler cores interact?"

Ferb's eyes widened. "No, we don't. Theoretically, they would either amplify the explosion or neutralize it. I wouldn't suggest testing it."

"Got a better idea?"

"Set it for a single tumble, and just drop the nuke in an alternate dimension."

"And hope that the nuke doesn't get set off by the tumble."

"Well, yes."

"I think it'd work."

Ferb paused, as if about to say something, then closed his mouth. He gripped Phineas's arm. "Come back safe."

"Hey, it's me, right?"

* * *

Archer watched the chart showing the progress the rebel ships were making toward the northern tip of lower Michigan. Four nuclear devices had been placed at the straits, more than enough to vaporize the entire fleet. Once that broke the rebellion's back, the leaders would be rounded up and dealt with.

Not enslaved this time. They'd enslaved some leaders of the other factions, and pretended to enslave the Council members in their governments. The "enslaved" Council agents now hid out at a black site like Sanford Central.

But this rebellion had to be put down with extreme prejudice, _pour encourager les autres_. Surviving rebel leaders would face a firing squad on live TV. Senator Martin had asked to personally pull the trigger on the man who had killed her daughter.

Archer wasn't sure he agreed with using nukes here. They'd refrained from using nuclear weapons all through the 18-year civil war, on the grounds that one use would invite escalation. Even after Southwest had thrown off Council control, neither side had been willing to take that step into nuclear weapons.

But, that was why Phil was commander-in-chief. It was, ultimately, his call. It would make it clear to the rebels that they were willing to take extreme steps against anyone attempting to split America apart again, and to the rest of the world that America was still a nuclear power and a force to be reckoned with.

And it wasn't like they had a lot of alternatives. Anti-ship missiles hadn't been a high priority for a civil war that was almost entirely conducted on land. Dixie and Southwest had ended up with most of the naval forces, but they hadn't been of much use. Southwest had the difficulties of logistics when operating on the opposite side of the continent from their bases, while Dixie's naval forces had been taken down by what ship-killer missiles Columbia had had.

They could send cruise missiles, if their cruise missile commanders in range hadn't both joined the rebels.

They could send airplanes, except that going that close to the border put them in range of Canadian anti-aircraft missiles. And that assumed that the pilots would remain loyal. They were very reluctant to send up interceptors that close to Chicago, for fear of one of them deciding to put a Hellfire missile through the windows of the Oval Office.

Archer's secure phone buzzed in his pocket. He walked into a remote corner of the room and answered it. "Acid Test," he said, giving his code name.

"Jumping Jack," Dutch said in response.

"Alpha Wolf says you did well," Archer said, using General Sumner's codename. "How's the knee?"

"Didn't get re-injured, luckily. Despite the best efforts of _someone_. Which was why I was calling - any word on what they're doing with her?"

"Harmony offer," Archer said.

"Aw, shit. No chance I can get a hold of her, then."

"By the time you're up to it, she'll either be on our side or dumped in Lake Michigan."

"Got it. Thanks. Jumping Jack out."

Archer hung up the phone and shook his head. _Dutch really needs to stop thinking with his cock_.

* * *

Isabella pulled the covers up to her chin in the giant bed. After a week of sleeping on cots and in vehicles, she'd been placed in a guest bedroom in the New White House. She'd been given real clothes to wear, including - surprisingly, given her previous experiences as a Central captive - underwear, and was currently wearing a silky blue nightgown that they'd provided.

She'd been placed in the Green Bedroom. If they hadn't told her, it would have been obvious from the green wallpaper and deep forest green carpeting. The bedspread was a lighter green as well.

She wasn't seriously considering the President's offer, but she knew that he'd told her enough that she wouldn't be allowed to leave unless they thought she was on their side. If it came down to it, she could fake cooperation for a little while, but she knew they'd make sure they had leverage on her. If Phineas came back, she was quite sure the two of them would never be allowed to go anywhere together unless they were heavily guarded.

She couldn't do much by herself. She could only hope that Irving had seen the video and told somebody who could take appropriate steps. She suspected she was being watched even now, and while she wasn't restrained, she knew there were guards immediately outside the room. The guards were all aware of her implants' abilities. Any attempt to escape would be treated as a rejection of the deal.

She also noticed that there were no computers in this room. In fact, the desk had a spot that looked like it had had a desktop computer removed suddenly. Obviously, they didn't want to let her have free rein on their computer networks. For good reason, she'd admit.

She rolled over in the bed. It was far, far too empty. The silky feel of the nightgown on her bare skin was really making her miss having Phineas in bed with her. She'd need to bring this along with her if she could, or get a replacement if she couldn't.

She wrapped herself around a spare pillow, holding it as if it were Phineas, and tried to drift off to sleep.


	12. Mackinac

The hovercar skimmed across the dark surface of Lake Huron, racing toward the Straits of Mackinac. Phineas tried not to think about the stupidity of what he was doing. There were three suspected nuclear bombs planted on the route the convoy would take. Hopefully, he could tumble all three into other dimensions, leaving the area safe for the rebel ships.

He'd made an end-run around Lake Superior, hoping to spend as little time as possible in American territory, especially near armed nuclear bombs. He was due to cross the border in ten seconds...now. He was over American waters, about forty miles away from the straits. He could see the rebel convoy just behind him, slicing through the darkness, silhouetted against the starlit sky.

He was considerably faster than they were; he had an hour or so before they'd catch up with him at the straits. He deployed his radiation detector to find the hidden bombs, but unfortunately, the water would absorb almost all of the radiation. He'd marked on his map where the spy satellites thought the bombs had gone - they were in an unevenly-spaced line through the narrow part of the strait, where the ships would have no choice but to pass.

The first bomb was just ahead. He slowed down and watched the radiation detector as he approached the marked point. There wasn't anything there, so he began to spiral around it, eating up valuable time. Finally, after about five minutes of searching, the detector pinged, and he was able to locate it exactly.

 _Here goes nothing_ , he thought. He brought the hovercar to a stop above the bomb. He pulled out a tumbler core, then slid a floor panel aside. Carefully, he dropped the tumbler core down. It was set to activate on contact with water, and tumble whatever it hit that was solid. He held his breath as he waited, watching down through the open floor panel.

With a _*foomp*_ , the water suddenly dipped down, as if a void had appeared within it. The water rushed in, and a giant column of water rose up, hitting him in the face. He spat out the water and wiped his eyes, then closed the panel. The detector showed no signs of a bomb in the area.

"One down," he muttered to himself as he powered up the hovercar again. He traced along the line to the estimated drop point of the second bomb, watching the detector. It twitched just as he was approaching the target location, and he was able to quickly pin down the bomb's location. He dropped the tumbler core on it, closing the panel before it went off. The splash made the panel rattle as the bomb was sent away.

 _No problem_ , he thought, heading toward the third and final bomb.

Halfway to the estimated drop location, the detector signaled. He checked it, and found that there was indeed a bomb there. That was unexpected - he was pretty sure this one was farther down.

 _What if I miscounted?_ The thought sent a chill up his spine. If he'd miscounted, he had two nuclear bombs to disable, and only one tumbler core to do it with. How could he do that?

 _First things first._ He marked the GPS location on his map, then raced toward the estimated drop point of the third - possibly fourth - bomb. He watched the detector closely, hoping that he was just wrong and that the detector wouldn't find anything.

As he reached the target coordinates, the detector indicated a fourth bomb.

"Fuck!" he shouted, pounding the panel with his fist. His mind raced, trying to find a solution to his problem.

He looked in the back of the hovercar, trying to see if there was anything useful in there. Something he could use to create a new tumbler core, perhaps. All he found was a couple hundred feet of cable and a toolkit.

He looked again at the cable, and smiled.

* * *

"Mutineer convoy over first bomb now," the tech said, staring at her screen. Archer leaned over her, a cold smile on his face.

"Excellent," he said. "Let me know when they reach the third bomb, so I can be here to watch for the fourth."

"Sir, there was some kind of odd splash by the second bomb."

"I'm sure it's just an air bubble that was trapped under it," Archer said. "It'll be fine."

* * *

Phineas surfaced above the water, breathing heavily. He'd gone into the water to attach the cable to the third bomb. The cable climbed up, out of the water, and then vanished into the dimly-lit square of the opened panel as it entered the cabin of the cloaked hovercar.

He'd gone back to the third bomb to give himself more time; if he'd towed the fourth bomb back, he'd have had less time to disarm it before the convoy caught up to him.

He reached up, grabbing the edge of the opening, and pulled himself inside. He couldn't close the panel, unfortunately, without losing the cable, so he'd have to go more slowly than usual.

Which was to be expected, anyway, since he was towing a nuclear bomb.

He checked his readouts; the convoy was at most ten minutes behind him. He'd need to hurry.

He started the hovercar forward; it began moving very sluggishly. He didn't want to jerk it up to speed too quickly, possibly snapping the cable or - even worse - jolting the bomb and accidentally setting it off.

Above about 20 miles per hour, the cable seemed to creak a bit, so he slowed down. He could see the ships approaching him from behind, black shapes against star-spattered indigo sky. He worked through the math a bit - if he could keep this speed, he should have at least three or four minutes to put his plan into action before the lead ships arrived.

He set the tumbler core on the floor near the opening, but back far enough that it wouldn't fall in accidentally. The last thing he wanted was having the tumbler activate while he was on top of the bombs.

Finally, with the lead ships looming behind him, he reached the coordinates. He pulled the bombs as closely together as he could without them bumping into each other, then stopped the hovercar. He released the cable from its anchor inside the hovercar cabin, then leapt out the opening, landing feet-first in the water from a couple feet up.

He took a deep breath and dove down, finding the bomb in the dim waters of Lake Michigan - or was it still Lake Huron here? He wasn't quite sure. Regardless, it was exactly where he expected. He grabbed the dangling cable from the other bomb, then braced himself against this one, and pulled.

They moved, barely. He checked, and saw that he had a few feet to go.

He surfaced for a quick breath, noting that the lead ships were maybe a minute away, and dove back down. He had to tie the bombs together enough that the tumbler field would treat them as one unit, but they had to be in physical contact with each other for that. He braced against one bomb and pulled the two together with the cable. His hands were in agony at the pain caused by the rough cable, while his lungs screamed at the lack of oxygen. The bombs were closer, but still not close enough; he went back up for another breath.

The ships were practically on top of him as he dove back down, grabbing the cable to force them together one last time.

* * *

Isabella had been rousted from her room just after midnight, as the convoy was reaching the bombs. She'd put on a gorgeous blue satin robe over her nightgown, both to keep her warm and to keep the President from ogling her too blatantly.

President Sherman had wanted her to see the defeat of the mutineers live, so they could get started on integrating her into the Council bright and early tomorrow morning. The White House Situation Room was large, with a long table down the center and one wall covered with screens. She was guided to a chair across from the President, who was watching the center screen avidly. The state of the convoy was marked on it, along with the locations of the four bombs, and an estimated time until the bombs would be detonated. It was under two minutes now, and dropping fast.

 _I hope Irving and Colin came up with something,_ she thought.

* * *

"Okay. Detonation on my mark," Archer said.

The tech flipped a cover on her desk open, revealing a bright red button.

"Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark."

The tech pressed down on the red button.

* * *

Phineas wrapped the cable around both bombs, now in contact with each other, and swam up to the hovercar as quickly as he could. The lead ship was just passing him, and if he didn't move in the next thirty seconds, one of the others would run him over.

He rolled onto the floor of the hovercar, breathing deeply, and grabbed the tumbler core. He turned it on, reached over, and dropped it through the open panel.

A giant spray of water shot up through the opening, spraying everything inside the hovercar, and he laughed in relief. He closed the panel, then stood up and almost fell into the pilot's seat. He shoved the throttle forward, and the hovercar leapt away from the oncoming ships.

* * *

The timer flashed zero briefly, then started counting up, with a negative sign in front of it. It reached five seconds, then fifteen, as President Sherman's smile shrank.

"Where's the kaboom?" Isabella said in her best Marvin the Martian voice. "There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom."

"What happened? Get her out of here!" President Sherman exploded, enraged. He grabbed a phone and started yelling into it, while waving her back to her room. The guards politely but firmly gestured her out the door. She stood and kept herself from smiling until she was in the hallway.

* * *

"Why didn't they go off?" Archer asked.

"I don't know, Sir," the tech said, typing frantically into her computer. "Maybe they jammed our transmitters?"

"Unlikely. We'd have detected the jamming."

"Well, then, I don't know. Should I ping the bombs to respond with their status? They've been under radio silence, but maybe I can figure out the malfunction."

"Do that," he said, waving his hand.

The phone next to the tech's station rang. He looked at it. The tech looked at him, then at the phone, then back at him, nervously.

He picked up the phone as the tech, relieved, returned to her typing. "Archer," he said.

"What the fuck happened? Or, rather, didn't happen?" the President screamed into his ear.

"We're looking into it, Mr. President," Archer said.

The tech looked up from her screens, mouthing the words "no response" at him.

"Let me know as soon as you've found out, Archer," the President said before hanging up.

"No response?" Archer asked.

"No response from any of the bombs. It's like they aren't there at all."

Archer's eyes narrowed. "That splash you saw. Could it have been caused by a bomb being shifted out of our dimension?"

The tech thought for a second. "It would match up, I think."

"Check the sensor logs to see if there are tumbler signatures nearby."

She typed for a few moments. "We don't have enough sensor logs from that area to be sure, Sir. There's something faint, but..." She shrugged. "It's not enough to be sure."

He sighed and patted her on the shoulder. "You've done well. I'll report this up the food chain."

* * *

Colin watched the feed of the White House Situation Room. President Sherman started yelling, as the guards escorted Isabella out.

"We did it!" he said, raising his arms over his head.

"Well, we didn't. Phineas did," Irving said, watching over his shoulder.

"Only because we - you - were able to tell him what was happening!" Colin said, excitedly. He turned to face Irving, and, without really thinking about it, grabbed him for a kiss.

 _Oh, shit,_ he thought as he realized what he was doing. He finished the kiss and backed off, embarrassed. "Sorry," he murmured.

"I'm not," Irving said, leaning forward and kissing him back.

* * *

Adyson sat back as Marianne kicked the truck into gear and started it rolling. Adyson was riding shotgun for the trip, managing the radio so Marianne could keep an eye on the road.

She cursed her prosthetic leg - while she could get around inside the city, driving a truck like this really needed both feet to be fully functional. But at least she could do something to help. She pointedly didn't look at the assault rifle propped up next to her, with grenade launcher mounted underneath.

Marianne pulled into line behind the next truck, following it out to the interstate. It was a straight shot up on Interstate 61 to Interstate 59, and then to Chicago.

The word had come of the convoy heading to capture Chicago. Danville was the closest city that could send troops overland, so they'd decided to gather up the active soldiers and veterans who'd joined the rebellion and take them up to Chicago. There were hostile bases there, but they could force their way through, or at least draw some forces away from the waterfront. Every little bit would help.

It was a fool's errand, but Adyson would rather die fighting than let the Council run the country any longer. It seemed a lot of people agreed with her.

Marianne was driving a truck that carried a couple dozen soldiers in the back. Others had supplies and weapons. A few trucks carried tanks and APCs, which would be unloaded when they got closer. Four Humvees would be escorting them as well, along with a couple attack choppers.

Assuming nobody stopped them, they should arrive around noon, she'd been told.

She didn't think the odds of Chicago just letting them through were very good.


	13. Invasion

Isabella woke up to a knock on her bedroom door. She looked around for a moment before remembering she was still in the New White House.

"Mistress Garcia-Shapiro?" a voice said through the door.

"Come in," she said, sitting up and pulling the blanket up to cover her nightgown.

The door opened, and a female slave entered. Like the male slaves, her uniform resembled that of Colonial times, but hers was much more abbreviated. She wore a light blue dress, which contrasted nicely with her pale skin and blonde hair. The dress was cut very low in the front to show rather generous cleavage, and her tiny waist indicated that she probably had stays or a corset underneath. Instead of the hoop skirts and petticoats that would be expected, her dress came straight down to just above her knees. Her hair was held up in a mob cap, and her only jewelry was the slave collar.

"Mistress, the President asks you to join him for breakfast in one hour," the slave said, standing in the doorway.

"That sounds lovely...what is your name?"

"This slave has assigned the name 'Beatrice', Mistress," the slave said with a frozen smile. Isabella mentally cursed herself for the question, and the whole Council for reinstituting slavery. _Hopefully you'll have a real name again soon._

"My apologies. Please convey my acceptance to the President."

"Certainly, Mistress," the slave said, curtseying low enough that Isabella could see the top of the corset down the front of her dress, and then retreating out the door, which closed behind her.

Isabella rolled out of bed in search of a shower and clean clothes for the day.

* * *

Irving woke up, wrapped up in warmth. It took a moment before he realized that that was because Colin was holding onto him.

He thought back through last night - they'd seen the nuclear bombs fail, and the President's fury. And they'd been in a celebratory mood. Colin had kissed him, then backed off, concerned that he'd gone too far. So Irving had kissed him back.

One thing had led to another, and here they were, tangled together on one of the cots, bare skin on bare skin.

Irving opened his eyes lazily. Colin was staring back at him from a few inches away, his eyes worried.

"Hey," Irving whispered.

"You okay?" Colin asked.

Irving chuckled. "Yessirree. Never been better."

Colin sighed in relief. "I wasn't sure if this was something just spur of the moment, or..."

"Seemed to me that it was something we both wanted, and celebrating made a darn good excuse."

Colin laughed, and smiled, finally. _I'd really like more smiles like that,_ Irving thought.

"Yeah, I think you're right. Not sure how this will work in the long term..." Colin said.

Irving shrugged. "We'll worry about the long term once we see that there might be one. Let's go see what's going on in the White House."

Colin let go, rolling off the bed. "Sounds good. I'll go grab a shower while you start things up."

* * *

Adyson and Marianne had gotten shuffled up to the lead truck, and Adyson was keeping a careful eye out. An IED had taken off her leg during the war, and she wanted to make sure another one didn't get the rest of her.

A Humvee flanked her on each side, and another pair trailed behind them. The attack choppers had gone to refuel, but would be back shortly.

"Railroad Seven, be advised, there's a roadblock ahead," her radio said. Railroad Seven was the designation she'd been given.

She picked up her microphone. "Understood. Should we go through, wait for the choppers, or stop and let the folks with guns deal with it?"

"Your call once you see it, Railroad Seven."

"Got it. Will keep everyone advised."

The truck crested a hill, and Adyson saw the roadblock. Half a dozen Humvees in two rows blocked all lanes of the Interstate. Behind them, soldiers had assault rifles pointed down the road.

"This is Hammer Two. I got it, Railroad Seven," a female voice said. A soldier leaned up in the Humvee on her left, holding a single-shot antitank rocket. It fired, a streak of light leaving behind a blast of smoke. The rocket struck the center vehicle of the front rank, blasting it backwards into the Humvee behind it. Some of the soldiers were crushed under the vehicles, while others were blown back by the explosion. A couple on the edges recovered quickly, bringing up their rifles again.

The machine gun on the Humvee on her right started firing, and the remaining soldiers scurried for cover. Marianne accelerated her truck down the road, down the hill. "Better warn 'em, Ady," she said.

Adyson keyed her microphone again. "Ramming speed!" she said, as Marianne aimed for the widest gap between vehicles.

She braced herself as the truck smashed through the Humvees, throwing them aside like children's toys. The Humvees on her side had pulled in behind them, and followed through the opening.

"That was fun!" she said into the microphone. "How far to the next roadblock?"

* * *

Isabella let President Sherman lead her into the Situation Room. He had been much more cheerful at breakfast than last night after the bombs had failed to go off.

The screens were showing the status of the convoy, which was expected in Chicago in a few hours. Below, on the interstate south of the city, another marker was moving northward.

"What's that one?" she asked, pointing to the marker on the road.

The President grinned again, that bright white flash on his dark face. "The protesters and mutineers in Danville decided to come visit. We have some surprises waiting for them, too."

"Such as?"

"See that marker there, just outside the city?"

Isabella nodded.

"We've got a killing ground set up there. A blockade, and the whole ground around the blockade has explosives set up."

"Going to be rough on the soldiers at the barricade," she said.

The President shrugged. "I'm not expecting to win this without casualties. We've got a couple blockades before that to convince the mutineers that they aren't serious threats."

"Still, do they know it's a suicide mission?"

"Of course not. I don't care. I will sacrifice every soldier in the Army to keep myself on top, if that's what it takes."

 _I hope you got that, Irving._

* * *

"Please tell me you were recording that," Colin said.

"Of course. The question is, what do we do with it?"

"Can we get into their command channels?"

"I don't think so. But we can run it on the broadcast networks and hope somebody tells them."

"We're likely to lose our ability to monitor as soon as we use that video," Colin said.

Irving shrugged. "You have to use these resources or they're lost anyway. We can get it out on the Chicago regional center pretty easily, and the other regionals that are on our side will probably pick it up as well."

"Well, then, I'll leave you to it," Colin said.

* * *

"We're taking a detour, folks," the radio said. "Barricade ahead that's booby-trapped." Adyson nodded as Marianne followed the lead truck onto the off-ramp.

"How'd we hear about it?" another voice asked.

"Somebody got a camera in the New White House and then dropped it on every channel. Showed us exactly where the roadblock was."

Adyson laughed. Whoever kept taking over the television networks certainly knew their stuff.

* * *

"How the fuck did they get those feeds?" the President screamed into the phone.

Isabella sat back, keeping an ear on him while watching the screens. Several of them, supposedly carrying news networks, were now looping bits from the past day or so inside the New White House. _Nice job, Irving._

President Sherman slammed down the phone and turned to her. "What the fuck did you get out of Sanford Central? We didn't find anything on you."

Isabella shrugged. "I destroyed my copy before I got caught. Somebody else got away with all the encryption keys for the data streams you're sending out of here."

He winced. "Sweet merciful Lord Jesus," he whispered. "What else?"

"I don't know, I didn't have much chance to see. I was busy working the security systems there so we didn't get caught when we left."

He collapsed into his chair, his eyes wide. "You got...everything."

"Not quite. I didn't have enough storage for the main database, or time to search through for anything useful. I'm sure you've got great stuff in there."

"Who was it?" he asked.

She smiled enigmatically. "You haven't kept your end of the deal for me to join you yet. You said you were going to stop the people attacking Chicago, remember? If you did, I'd join you, and if you didn't, you'd surrender to me."

"I..." he trailed off, staring at her silently.

"You didn't expect it to actually happen," she said.

He took a deep breath, looking at the map. "The soldiers here are deserting. Council commanders who try to stop them get shot. The mutineers won't even have token resistance now. They can just waltz right in to the New White House."

"In that case, I accept your surrender," she said smugly.

"No!" he stood up, stalking over to one of the Marines guarding the door, a young Native American woman. He reached for the pistol at the guard's belt, only to be caught up short when her DIMMER rifle poked him in the chest.

She pushed him away. "You heard her. Sir."

"You must obey me!" he shouted. "I am your Commander-in-Chief!"

She smiled thinly. "Sir, I'd like to survive to see tomorrow. And I'll be honest - letting you have a pistol right now is probably the worst thing I can do for that." The guard next to her nodded agreement.

Isabella stood and approached the President. "It's over, Phil. Too many people know about the Council. Even if you win this fight, your soldiers will never trust you again. It'll be mutiny after mutiny until either you lose, or they weaken you enough that the Canadians and Mexicans can roll right over you."

"It's not over until it's over!" he said, whirling around toward her. "You! You did all this! This is your fault!" He pulled a folding knife from a pocket of his pants, yanking it open and raising it to strike.

Her implants kicked up to speed, and she saw the knife descending slowly toward her. She caught his arm easily, twisting around. She flipped him over her shoulder, pulling the knife from his hand as he flew past. He landed in a heap on the floor, groaning in pain.

She set the knife on the table. "It might be. But I think it's your fault. All of you on the Council. You tried to run this horror show secretly, but secrets can't last."

He looked up at her through gritted teeth, holding his arm. "What's next?"

She glanced at the map, showing the forces approaching Chicago. "A military coup, an interim government, and hopefully elections as soon as possible. And everyone who was part of the Council on trial."

"Treason?" he asked nervously.

"I'm not a lawyer. Don't worry, Phil. I'm sure that slavery as a punishment will be abolished as one of the first acts of the new government." She grinned at him viciously. "They'll probably just execute you."


	14. Epilogue

Phineas paced the small room. He'd never been in the New White House before. When in Chicago, he'd spent most of his time in the Tower, or in one of the hotels nearby.

"It'll be fine," Isabella said, sitting back. She'd been here before, just a couple weeks ago, before the surrender of the Sherman government and the Council.

It had been a tumultuous couple of weeks. The data archive from Sanford Central included full details on exactly how they'd executed the bombings on Shatter Day, and how they'd manipulated the governments of the factions to keep the war going for so long.

Anyone who had been affiliated with the Council had been arrested for subversion, conspiracy, and accessory to murder, at a minimum. Those who had been involved in the bombings were facing multiple murder charges as well.

The door of the lounge swung open, and a young man in Colonial servant uniform said, "The President is ready to see you now." Isabella had said that the previous servants had all been slaves, but the blanket pardon of all slaves had gone through already. They'd asked the ex-slaves to stay on, just long enough for them to hire replacements; a few had refused and left immediately, but many had agreed to stay.

Phineas and Isabella followed the servant down the hall toward the Oval Office. Two Marines flanked the door; one of them smiled at Isabella and gave her a slight nod. Isabella smiled back as the door was opened.

He followed her in, and saw her smile become a bit fixed. Interim President Erik Bailey sat in one of the couches by the fireplace, and gestured them to the other. "Welcome," he said.

"Bet you didn't expect to end up here," Phineas said as he took a seat on the couch. Isabella sat next to him, curling her legs underneath herself.

Erik laughed. "Not even close. President of the Southwest, maybe, but certainly not of a reunified America." He turned to Isabella, his face serious. "If you need to beat me up, I've told the Marines and Secret Service to let you. I know you still owe me that much."

Isabella stared at him a long moment, then laughed. "Right now, I'm good. How are the prosecutions going?"

"We're still sorting through the evidence, but we're starting to get offers to plead guilty in exchange for a promise that they won't get the death penalty. Half of them have offered to testify against the other half in exchange for leniency."

"So why did you ask us to come here instead of heading straight to Danville?" Phineas asked. Isabella had returned to Canada, and they'd all stayed there as they'd watched the new government get its feet underneath itself. Erik had asked them to wait to return until he'd gotten everything settled.

"Well, first off, to give Isabella the shot at me she hadn't had yet. Looking at what I have to do, I suspect that leaving me here is punishment enough."

Isabella nodded with a smile. As the most prominent politician who had been clearly working against the Council, Erik had been an obvious choice as interim president. She'd mentioned to Phineas when he was named that it was going to be a horribly difficult, thankless job, and he was welcome to it.

"I'm good. What else?" Isabella asked, brushing down her skirt.

"Second, I need you to get Danville functional again. Phineas, are you willing to take over as Mayor?"

Phineas sat back, stunned. He hadn't considered it. Politics wasn't really what he wanted to do. He was hoping to get back to his research, instead.

"Again, you're trusted there, and you're clearly not working for the Council," Erik continued. "Unless you can come up with a better candidate, of course."

"Holly," Isabella said. "She used to work for Abercrombie. She knows how the city runs."

Erik paused, pondering. "I had considered her. She'd be excellent, and her mother was apparently a key part of the resistance there. But she went to Toronto with Baljeet, and you'd need to pry them apart first."

"Baljeet? Oh, Doctor Tjinder?" Isabella said.

"He's mellowed," Phineas said.

"Largely because of Holly." Erik agreed.

"It's amazing what getting laid on a regular basis can do," Phineas muttered, and Isabella laughed.

"I still think she'd make a better mayor than I would," Phineas said, looking up. "And I'd be very willing to hire Baljeet on at Fletcher-Flynn if he wants to be local, or work with Doofenshmirtz Biosciences to loan him out. We can find a way."

"That works," Erik said, nodding. "There was one other thing," he said.

"Oh?"

He stood and walked over to his desk, picking up two large envelopes that sat on it. He handed the first envelope to Phineas. "First, official pardons for both of you, for anything you may have done during the wars. There's one in there for Ferb as well. Second, Isabella, I have something for you." He opened the other envelope, sliding out a gold star on a blue ribbon. "Staff Sergeant Garcia-Shapiro, please rise."

She stood, and Phineas stood next to her.

"There will be a more formal ceremony later, but I have the great pleasure of awarding you the Medal of Honor for your service," Erik said, putting the ribbon around her neck. "Your service to your country was so far above and beyond the call of duty that I wish I had something even more impressive to award you."

"I..." Isabella said, stammering. She held the medal in her hand as tears ran from her eyes. She reached over and gave Erik a hug. "Thank you, Mr. President."

* * *

Ferb followed Phineas and Isabella in the front door of Fletcher-Flynn Research. The security guard glanced up at them, then sat up quickly. "Mr. Flynn! Mr. Fletcher! You're back!"

"We're back, Tony," Phineas said, clasping the man's hand. "How's it been here?"

"We've been keeping the lights on, but not much more than that. Should I tell Carla you're on your way up?'

"No, let us surprise her," Phineas said with a smile.

The elevator ride to the top floor was quick and quiet. The car arrived on the top floor with a _*ding*_ , and the doors opened to the lobby. Carla was digging in the paper files. "Tony, what did I tell you about..." She looked up, and screamed.

"Hello, Carla," Phineas said with a grin.

"Mr. Flynn! Mr. Fletcher! Izzy! You're all back safe!" She rushed around her desk to hug them enthusiastically.

"We are. I heard you kept the lights on?" Phineas asked.

"I did. We did," she said. "They never got around to nationalizing us, so I've been paying the people still here out of the cash on hand. I assumed that was what you'd want."

"You did exactly the right thing," Phineas said.

"Oh, Mr. Fletcher," she said, turning toward Ferb. "Your car is all ready to go downstairs. I had Tony drive it around the garage every couple weeks so it didn't sit too long, and it just got an oil change last week."

Ferb reached over and gave her another hug.

"Is Izzy going to be joining me out here again?" Carla asked. "And are you going to make an honest woman out of her now?"

Phineas laughed. "Actually, she's going to have an office in back. She's taking over as head of security."

"Oh!" Carla said, a bit disappointed.

"But I'll still have time to come out and talk," Isabella said. "Best way to keep an eye on what's going on in the company. How did Christmas go with your family?"

Ferb left Carla telling Phineas and Isabella everything that had gone on, and went back through the offices. They were intact, as far as he could tell. The private elevator behind them carried him down to the garage, where his Cobra sat. He ran his hands across it - it had just been waxed, as well. He needed to get Carla a very nice gift for this, that was for sure.

* * *

Vanessa rolled her suitcase out of the arrivals area, looking around for her ride. She'd called him after she'd gotten off the plane, and he'd said he'd be here...

A dark blue Shelby Cobra pulled up in front of her, its top down. Ferb grinned up at her from the driver's seat. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting," he said.

"Just got here. Pop the trunk?" There certainly wasn't anywhere else to put her suitcase in the tiny passenger compartment.

He pulled up the parking brake and stepped out, unlocking the trunk with a spare key. Her suitcase and briefcase fit in easily, and he closed the trunk with a thump before opening her door for her.

"Why thank you, sir," she said as she took her seat. He circled around to the driver's seat, released the brake, put the car in gear, and took off into the airport's traffic.

"I wasn't expecting the airport to be this busy," she said, looking around. "Last time I was here it was dead."

"Lots of people coming into the hub of the rebellion," he said, pulling out onto the exit ramp from the terminal road. "How are repairs on your building going?"

"They think the structural damage is enough that we'll need to tear it down and rebuild from scratch. We're looking into a new headquarters building now."

He merged onto the freeway and hit the gas, and the Cobra leapt down the pavement as the wind blew through her hair. "In that case, you don't necessarily need to build it in Toronto," he said blandly.

She looked over at him sharply. "I don't know if my people are willing to move to Danville yet. Two weeks of peace isn't enough to convince people that America is stable again."

"Perhaps," he shrugged. "Perhaps some of them would. Perhaps you don't have to put everyone in the same building."

"You could relocate to Toronto," she countered.

He smiled at her softly. "I could."

They drove on in silence for a moment before he said, "We do have to talk a bit of business, though. Patent cross-licensing."

"Technically, Doofenshmirtz Biosciences has all the patent rights to anything you did in Canada."

"Canadian patent rights. We'd like to swap - we get American rights to anything Doctor Tjinder does with the implants, and in exchange, you get Canadian rights to anything we do."

"That's a much better deal for you than it is for me. The American rights are much more valuable."

"And we both get joint rights for the rest of the world."

"Ooh," she said softly.

* * *

Phineas stood up at the front of the small reception room, his palms sweating. He wanted to tug at his tie, shift around, anything, but he felt the need to stand there like he was embalmed. The suit fit just fine - Ferb had taken him to a tailor to get it custom-made. He didn't even mind wearing it. He just...he didn't want to be anywhere but here, right now, but he kind of wanted to be anywhere but here right now.

"It'll be fine," Ferb whispered. Ferb wore his suit much more comfortably, but then, he wasn't the one getting married. Phineas wasn't entirely sure what he and Vanessa had decided, but marriage wasn't on the list yet. He'd put a lot of miles on the Cobra driving to Toronto and back to visit while she organized the new headquarters building.

To draw his attention away, Phineas looked out across the crowd. Friends and family almost filled the small room. Candace, Linda, and Amanda had come from England, bringing Grandpa Reg's apologies. Baljeet and Vanessa were chatting - knowing them, probably about work, and how to divide up Baljeet's time between Danville and Toronto. Phineas suspected this was going to end with Doofenshmirtz Biosciences opening a facility in Danville so that both of them could be here full-time. Carla and several other top Fletcher-Flynn employees took up much of the rest of his side.

Over on the bride's side, Colin and Irving were making jokes to each other. Adyson and Katie sat nearby. Katie's eyes were wide as she listened to the conversations; she'd gotten the first experimental set of civilian ear implants just a few days ago, and the results were very promising; her hearing was over 90% restored and still improving. They were a ways out on enhanced limb replacements, but when they got there, Adyson would certainly get an offer. Most of the rest of Colin's platoon were there as well, having recovered from their own enhancements. Ginger and Buford had sent their regrets; she still wasn't comfortable coming back to America.

One of the doors at the back opened, and Phineas stiffened before realizing that it was just a pair of Secret Service agents. They scanned the crowd, then one nodded back through the open door.

Interim President Bailey came in, quietly slipping into the back on Phineas's side of the aisle. Two more Secret Service agents followed him in, and the four took up guard positions in the back of the room. Two officers from the Danville Police Department joined them.

The doors in the back opened wide, and Holly - Mayor Washington - stepped through. She wore a long gold dress that clung to her, and Phineas saw Baljeet's jaw drop. Phineas gave a wistful sigh - he gave her up a long time ago, but part of him still wished he hadn't. He certainly didn't regret what he was about to do, and he wouldn't change it, but there would always be a part of him that loved Holly too.

She marched up the aisle, greeting people as she went, until she reached Phineas. She gave him a wink, then stepped to the side to await the bride.

The recording switched to the traditional wedding march, and Isabella stepped into the open doorway. Now it was Phineas's turn for his jaw to drop. She was...perfect. She'd chosen not to go with a white dress, but instead wore a light blue gown that subtly matched her eyes and shone against her skin. Just below the neckline, a small blue pin signified the medal she'd been awarded.

She stepped confidently down the aisle, her eyes on him, and he was entranced. With a bit of feeling like a deer in headlights.

She reached the front of the room, stepping up next to him with a grin. "Ready for this?"

He realized that he was, and nodded. "Yes. Yes, I am."

* * *

 **And with that, we'll draw this series to a close. I have one side-story that I'm working on (how Buford and Ginger got together) but I don't currently plan to go further with this storyline.**

 **I'm still somewhat amazed that I finished this thing. Almost 160,000 words across three stories.**

 **To everyone who has read this far: thank you. Your time and attention are an amazing gift.**


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